


Calamitous

by embyrinitalics



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Calamity!Link, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Enemies to Lovers but Still Enemies, F/M, zelink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 77,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27400921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embyrinitalics/pseuds/embyrinitalics
Summary: (BotW AU, Zelink) 10,000 years ago, the Hero of another era was bound to the Calamity and cast into the void. Emerging from the seal as a mortal hybrid, he aims to destroy himself and take the Calamity down with him; but the Princess of this new era, so much like his own, has other plans.Imported from FFN November 2020.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Mipha/Revali (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 40
Kudos: 94





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> First 13 chapters originally posted on ffn.

Unholy light was pouring out of the fissure in the field in garnet hues, wafting upwards in gnarled tendrils like the hungry arms of a beast. The fissure hadn't stopped growing since those first, seismic tremors ripped the ground apart and sent cracks snaking out of the heart of Hyrule. It was swallowing more of her by the day, and sprawling deeper, deeper into the earth as the source beneath began to stir: an open scar, hedged by veins and leaking blood.

We knew the foul, evil signs it had begun to spew could only precede one thing. But my Champions and I were ready. Years of training and prayers had awakened the goddess within me, and they had all been chosen for their prowess in battle and their valor.

Still, my heart hammered against my ribs as the light began to coalesce.

Smoke mingled with the bloodlight, blending and taking shape. Becoming something else. Heralding a beginning, or perhaps an end. I called upon the goddess within, breathing deep as she stirred awake, as the sacred power that was my birthright filled me with a glow that cascaded off my body through my eyes and my skin. Father said he had never seen anything like it: that it was of unequaled brightness and purity, an antidote, forged by the gods to snuff out evil. To smother the incarnation of malice and hate that was forming out of the fissure before our very eyes.

I had never been brave enough to look.

The form took shape, and a cold wind snapped across our battlefield, clearing away the billows of smoke and shafts of bloodlight. What it left behind was not like the hideous form spoken of in legends, the beast I was expecting; from the distance, it looked nearly like a man, hunched under the burden of his own birth and clothed in shadow. But my Champions didn't hesitate, riding out to meet it with the fury of the four Great Races.

Daruk barreled forward, unstoppable as a mountain, swinging his famed Boulder Breaker in great circles over his head as though it weighed next to nothing. Revali soared skyward, wings cutting through sunlight and a cornflower sky, nocking his arrows and taking deadly aim. Urbosa moved so surely with her weapons it was more like a dance, closing in on her enemy so quickly she seemed a vision of lightning strikes and sunbeams. Mipha was small, and quiet, hardly making a sound as she tucked her fins and flowed over the hillside like a stream of water; but the spear she brandished glimmered with deadly knots of light the color of water, skipping off her silver headdress and crimson scales, and ringed in so much glare she was a fearsome thing to behold.

I breathed and let them go.

The figure had gotten to his feet. He let them come without moving to counter. And I breathed. Because his eyes were on me.

He raised his arm to block Daruk's blow, and the Boulder Breaker splintered on it, the impact shaking the Goron so hard he recoiled. His fingers jerked apart, summoning some unseen force, and Daruk was sent flying, plowing across the grass and dirt away from the fight. Revali loosed his arrows, but the Calamity made them fall of the sky with a glance. He breathed, and a squall tore across the sky so hard that Revali was ripped out of it. Urbosa was already conjuring a bolt of lightning, sparking on her fingertips as she snapped them together, but the Calamity redirected the current before it landed in a mirror gesture, sending it into her. Mipha nimbly leapt upwards as Urbosa collapsed, hurling her trident with lethal precision. But the Calamity bent back, just a hairsbreadth out of the way, and the spear stuck harmlessly into the dirt. He waved his arm, and she lost consciousness before she hit the ground.

I thrust my hand towards him, pulsing with furious light as he made to move forward. The Champion's attacks had been easily deflected, but the distraction was enough. The sealing power was answering, rushing to the surface, ready to engulf the battlefield. Ready to engulf the Scourge of Hyrule. It felt like fury and fire. It felt ready to engulf _me_.

But in the next instant he was there, so close that I could see his eyes, brilliant and blue, and the threads of orange light warring for dominance inside them, and his hand was biting into my wrist so hard the light flickered.

"Stop," he ordered, his voice startlingly human. It was jarring. It was almost more terrifying this way: a quiet, desperate growl, instead of the monstrous thunder I had been taught to expect my entire life. Did he know? Was he seeing through me, looking for weakness, for fear? I pressed harder, letting the light have more of me. Letting it devour me as it expressed the goddess's wrath. But it _wasn't working_. He ordered again, more urgently, "Stop!"

My heart felt near to bursting from exertion, and I felt the fear I had sworn I banished coil in my throat. He was _resisting_ me, pushing back, like a soldier pitching himself forward into the wind, and the amber threads in his eyes glowed with newfound rage.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Legend promised us that this _couldn't_ happen. The light of the gods was the ultimate weapon, irresistible, preserved through generations to serve no other purpose than to drive him back. His muted snarl grew more feral, his fingers biting more painfully into my wrist, as he planted his feet in the storm. As he slowly gained the upper hand.

"How?" I whispered, voice trembling, praying aloud to a goddess who wouldn't hear, because she was _me_. I pushed harder. He pushed back, and a cry left my throat as the force of it dropped on me like a weight. "What do I do? _Hylia, what do I do?!_ "

He closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath through his nostrils, raising his left hand, balled into a fist, to show me the triangles burning through the back of his gauntlet. They were identical to the light shining on my own hand: the power of the gods, only there were two brilliant shapes lit on his body instead of one.

Hot tears, visceral, born of both awe and terror, spilled down my cheeks. It was the most wicked, beautiful nightmare. The gods who protected Hyrule also vied to destroy it. And there was nothing I could do to stop them.

I threw all my strength into one final, desperate attempt to cast him back; light ebbed off of us as he summoned the strength to answer. We were a pair of burnished embers, glowing brighter than the sun. And then he pushed back, and my light collapsed.

I gasped as my power was stamped down by his own, as my mortal form gave out and the goddess within fell back into her slumber. I closed my eyes as my legs gave out, awaiting the frigid, unwelcoming hands of death, picturing his eyes, a tangle of ice and fire, where they were burned in my mind. Would he kill me bodily, hungry for blood, snapping the bones of my neck or impaling me with some dark weapon? Or would he crush my spirit, casting my mind into an abyss to await eternity, as I had meant to do to him? But instead he stepped forward, catching me before I could fall, slipping one hand around my waist and cradling the back of my neck with the other. His hot breath fell on my ear and I shivered, his touch both warm and cold on my skin at once.

"Come along, Princess," his low, worn voice breathed as I was swept up in darkness, as I fell into a void so deep it took my breath away. "We have a long road ahead of us."


	2. Instincts

I woke to the cool sensation of moss under my cheek and the telltale crackling of a nearby fire. I didn't move, trying to assemble my bearings. My failure in the field was still too crisp, like a dream I couldn't quite wake from. But it was real. My body still burned with the afterglow of the now-dormant goddess. It throbbed like sunburn.

Which could only mean the Calamity was still nearby.

I strained, listening for traces of him beyond the fire: breathing, or weight shifting against bracken. For a long time, there was nothing. Then his knuckles gently brushed against my cheek, as though trying to coax me out of that lingering dream, and all at once my blood froze in my veins.

My eyes snapped open in tandem with the goddess's, and with a cry I let her power burst out of me in a deadly reflex. The fire beside us went out from the force of it, rippling away from me in a shockwave. He grabbed my branded wrist again, trying to contain the power breathing to life there; my power was splashing light on trees and stone as I twisted desperately in his grip, trying to break free and tangled up in him in the darkness. He found my other wrist and wrenched me around with a growl, pinning my hands under my throat and pulling me back against his chest. I went very still, half expecting him to break me in half where I stood. We were both panting; I must have caught him by surprise.

"Don't do that again," he warned me darkly, his breath heavy on my ear. His proximity made my skin crawl; his touch was too alien, too _godless_ , so cold and so warm, as though ice and fire mingled together under his skin. But instead of tearing me asunder he released me so quickly I stumbled to my knees. I glared back at him carefully; he lit the fire again with his arts, moving to sit beside it without sparing me a glance.

He looked familiar somehow in the firelight. A trick of the shadows, maybe, or a trick of his own design. He wore a simple tunic, fitted with leather belts, bracers, and gauntlets. The tailoring and the style of his equipment were beyond old-fashioned. He was like something out of an illustration in the library's history books, or threaded by ancient hands onto an antique tapestry. He was like something out of time.

I frowned at his prolonged silence and mustered the courage to speak.

"What do you want with me?" I demanded. My voice came out quieter than I would've liked; it was as though his presence commanded silence. But he didn't look at me. He seemed determined to ignore me, in fact. I steeled myself to try again. "I won't cooperate."

He frowned at that, his already disgruntled expression deepening. At least he acknowledged my existence.

"I'll accomplish what I set out to do alone, if I must," he growled, "though it would be easier with a second set of hands."

For a moment I only stared, derailed by the swerve of his logic. "I don't—"

"Is the Sword in the Great Hyrule Forest?" he interrupted, and my stomach dropped.

"What?"

"The Sword. The Blade of Evil's Bane. Does it still rest in the Lost Woods?"

I swallowed down fear, trying not to imagine the chaos it could mean if he ever found it. Trying to imagine what I could possibly do to stop him. "You wish to destroy it."

"I don't know that such a thing is even possible," he mused. It was not a question when he spoke next. "It has no wielder."

"No," I admitted bitterly. Surely he knew that all the legends said a hero wielding that blade would ensure his destruction. We searched far and wide for someone worthy of it; it made the fact that Calamity arrived before anyone could claim it that much more disheartening. "You didn't leave us a choice."

His mouth twisted, unexpectedly, into a wry smirk. "I suppose not."

I frowned deeper. He was awful, and terrifying, and the upturn of his lips made the goddess in me writhe. But I was his counterpart. I was born to oppose him. I couldn't be weak.

"You still haven't answered me," I insisted. "I demand to know why you've brought me here."

"You're hardly in a position to be making demands, Your Highness," he said, and I clenched my jaw. I could hardly argue that point. He stood before I could try anyway and moved closer, crouching so that we were nearly eye level, and I couldn't quite stop my heart from leaping into my throat. The firelight was playing tantalizingly on half his face, lighting up a single blue eye coiled in orange filament. "If you do as I say, you will destroy me. With any luck, the pall of the Calamity will never fall over Hyrule again. That's what you want, isn't it?"

I studied him, breathless, heart pounding, caught between fear and a blind, baseless hope. If only it were that simple. If only every nerve in my body didn't scream at me to run the other way. I whispered, "I can't trust you."

"I'm not asking for your trust," he scoffed. "Only your obedience."

"But if I don't trust you—"

He reached out suddenly, his fingers brushing my lips, startling me into silence. He traced my jawline, my cheekbone, and I trembled, the sensation of his touch slithering through me like a foul, bitter wind.

"Does this feel like the touch of someone you can trust?" he murmured. "That icy, numbing sensation of evil trapped in this skin, grating on your nerves and pulling the warmth from your body and putting knots in your stomach, that urge to recoil that you can't quite obey—that is the warning from the gods. You cannot trust me."

He stopped, mercifully, and my eyes fell shut as I recovered, a breath I had held too long finally escaping in a pitiful shudder. I dug my fingers into the grass and bit down on nothing, desperate to fight off the rest: the sudden rush tears building in my throat, the painful clench of my stomach that made me want to cry aloud. But I couldn't be that weak. I couldn't. Even if he was hate and evil incarnate. Even if it was taking every ounce of strength I could muster not to turn and be sick in the grass. I forced myself to breathe, forced myself to stay rather than flee into the woods screaming. He left me while I pulled myself together to sit at the edge of the fire again, and I swallowed bile and pried my eyes open again.

"I'm asking as a courtesy," he said curtly, once he thought I was calm enough to listen. "I could draw the answer out of your mind, instead, and it would be very unpleasant. So tell me plainly: is the Sword in the Lost Woods?"

I trembled again, the last of my adrenaline finally draining. It was true that there was no warning concerning the destruction of the Sword by the hands of evil that I had ever heard, and I could hardly keep the answer from him if he could truly go inside my mind. I whispered, "Yes."

"Then that is where we must go."

The monster stared, preoccupied, into the fire. I briefly entertained the idea of running away again, but to what end? Even if I could escape, it was clear that his power was matched to the goddess's. I had no reason to believe the Champions were still alive to aid me, either, and even if they were, man-made weapons and simple elemental magic were nothing next to his abilities. If running and fighting were both out of the question, that just left one grim, unpalatable option.

I knew better than to believe that he was telling the truth about letting me destroy him, of course, but staying alive was something of a priority.

I scanned my surroundings in the soft glow of the firelight. It was unfamiliar, especially on a moonless night. "Where are we?"

"A forest beside the river to the east," he murmured, still staring intently at the flames. "It was called Applean once, but these things shift with time."

"It's still called Applean," I said, my voice nearly a whisper. My body still felt weak, drained by his very presence; or perhaps he was employing some dark magic to render me less volatile. I took a deep breath, trying to reinforce my defenses as I made to challenge him again. "If I agree to help you, what reassurance do I have that you won't kill me?"

"None."

"But—"

"We've established that you can't trust me. I've already told you that I'll be destroyed, which should preclude the possibility that I'll be able to harm you afterwards, but since you don't believe me that will be of little comfort. My only other recourse is to swear to you, but I doubt the word of a demon will mean much."

I pursed my lips, absently wrapping my arms around myself against the chill of the night. I was just outside the warmth of the fire, but the idea of moving any closer to him was too awful to contemplate. "Given the alternative, I would rather have your word than none at all."

"Then you have it."

I shivered, and not because of him. The cold was starting to get the better of me. "Legend says your powers transcend time and space. Can't you just snap your fingers and take us there?"

"The Deku Tree prevents it," he answered with mild distaste. Then he tilted his head towards the fire, considering. "And I would like to see Hyrule one last time."

"You aren't at all like I expected," I sighed. My teeth chattered.

"No?" He eyed me from across the flames, and then stood, wandering in an arc into the woods, until I couldn't make him out in the shadows. Not seeing him was nearly worse than having him nearby; my heart thudded whenever I thought I spied him between the trees and my body tensed, anticipating danger. I half expected him to lunge out of the darkness transformed into some kind of hideous beast with a maw full of a hundred sharp, crooked teeth. Eventually he emerged from the dark, splashed in firelight and shadows. I turned to face him, inching back as he slowly stalked forward. But then he stopped, just as I felt the heat of the fire cascade over my back, crouching to watch me with a glint in his eyes that belied the darkness. "And what were you expecting, then?"

"I don't know," I whispered. "Something else. Something with talons and fangs, mindless and bloodthirsty, with a body of fire and eyes like blood."

"A pig snout, perhaps?" he mused, his eyes glinting with dark humor.

Many accounts had claimed he would have one. I watched him pensively, lulled by the fire and the fact that he hadn't come any closer for a few seconds. If it hadn't been for his inhuman touch, the power that radiated off him and the orange threads spooled around his placid blue eyes, I might never have known what he was. His features were pleasant, handsome even, framed in a curtain of hair the color of sun-ripened corn. His coloring was paler than it ought to have been, but in the firelight it wasn't so apparent. Perhaps that was part of the deception, part of what made him so deadly. Still, it seemed odd that the writings never mentioned it, always shrouding him in convoluted metaphor.

I thought of the tales of his ruthlessness, of his lack of control, of how he would burn everything he touched and turn castles to rubble and towns to ruins mere moments after his birth. He was evil, certainly—every instinct and reflex in my body told me so—but not the embodiment of frenzied hate I had thought he would be.

"Tell me," he murmured impassively, pulling me from my reverie, "what do you know of the last Rise of the Calamity?"

"It was eons ago," I murmured. "Legend says a princess housing a sacred power and a Hero wielding the holy blade came up against the Calamity with an army beyond reckoning. They fell to your power, but not before you were sealed for another ten thousand years."

"Both of them?"

For a moment I held my breath, caught off guard by the threatening edge in his voice, and forced a nod. "According to legend."

He sighed, an unexpectedly human sound. "It was foolish to hope it would be remembered differently, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" I asked, comprehension slowly dawning. "What really happened, ten thousand years ago?"

His eyes slid to mine, darkening. He murmured, "Go to sleep, princess."

With a wave of his hand he drew darkness my mind like a heavy curtain, and I slipped quickly, peacefully, into something dreamless, and knew no more.

It was morning when I stirred again.

The remnants of our fire were blackened and gray with cold. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I knew he was close. I checked cautiously over my shoulder; the Calamity was sitting against a tree, only a few feet away. The sunlight was trickling through the leaves over his head, dappling his face in soft, tremulous shadow.

I sat up slowly, stretching a little against the soreness in my back from sleeping on the ground. I hadn't exactly had a chance to get comfortable before he forced me under. But waking up at all was something of a pleasant surprise. He didn't deign to acknowledge me, though he must've been aware that I was awake by now. I pulled my hair to one side and ran my fingers through it, mulling over my predicament, and scowled drowsily as my eyes fell to the mark etched on my hand. Never would I have guessed that the same power that was supposed to be our salvation would also fuel the evil that was now my captor.

The sound of him biting into an apple made me start. I looked at him again, and he was staring at the apple, frowning.

"Typical," he muttered, chucking it over his shoulder.

Then he turned his clashing, ribboned eyes on me. He scanned me briefly, calculatingly, looking for something, and I had to fight the urge to shrink out from under his scrutiny. He finally stood, frowning again, and tossed me a second apple.

I caught it with surprise. "What's this?"

"Breakfast," he growled.

I stood in his cold silence, enduring his stare with what little wherewithal I had left. My nerves were still unsettled, set on edge by his presence; I could feel the evil wafting off him like a cool breeze, prickling against my skin like fever. I honestly wasn't sure I would be able to keep anything down. "I'm not hungry."

"Eat," he demanded, his frown deepening.

"But I—"

" _Eat_ ," he said again inflexibly, crossing the distance impatiently and drawing the hand holding the apple closer to my mouth by the wrist. I suppressed another shiver at the strangeness of his touch, staring unwillingly at the fruit. "We have a long road ahead of us and you need the energy. Now eat, before I set a field ablaze or cast a pestilence into a village."

I didn't know how seriously to take that threat, and wasn't willing to find out. I forced myself to take a small bite, trying to placate him, and chewed it thoroughly into oblivion before I swallowed. Satisfied, he turned north, clearly expecting me to follow. I looked longingly in the other direction. I couldn't possibly leave him to his own devices, but my simple Hylian instincts quailed at the idea of getting any closer to him than I already was. But I knew what I had to do; he seemed to know that I did, too, for he didn't turn back to see whether or not I followed, confidently heading towards the distant bend in the river. I took a steadying breath, and then took another bite as I fell in step several paces behind him.

We walked in silence while I finished my breakfast, my gaze fixed solidly on the back of his head. I let the apple core drop onto the forest floor, trying to conjure a plan. My thoughts veered constantly back to the others, who could still be strewn about Hyrule Field for all I knew, and to my people, who were in very real danger. I took a breath and marshaled my courage, beating down the instinct to flee as I purposefully closed the distance between us.

"You didn't answer my question last night," I demanded, and he glanced back, sneering, affording me a glimpse of his profile.

"And if you don't want to be unconscious for the rest of this trip, you won't ask again."

I quelled the goddess inside me—the bitter retort that bubbled to my lips, the tremor of fear as she remembered battling him too many times to count, the flare of frustration at his impudence—calling upon the calm of my prayerful meditations, which I knew so well by now.

"Fine," I breathed. "What questions am I allowed?"

"Try asking a few and you'll find out."

It sounded more like a threat than an invitation, but I chose to press on. I certainly wasn't going to trail him in submissive silence the entire way. "We're going to the Great Hyrule Forest?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"That's where the Sword rests," he droned, as though I were being unusually dense.

"I know that," I bit back. He rattled me so easily, poking and prodding until my anger could override my fear of him, which I am not ashamed to say was great. It was astonishing, actually. "But why do we need the Sword?"

"To destroy me."

"I have the power of the gods," I offered grimly. "If you would stop resisting, I could destroy you now."

He scoffed once, bitterly. "Sealing me away would not destroy me."

"But the legends—"

"Forget the legends," he interrupted. Again. I puffed a quiet sigh. "If legend held the key to destroying me, don't you think I would have been done away with long ago? It isn't that simple. I am a curse; part of a cycle, unending, that started before Hyrule was."

"Then teach me how I should destroy you," I suggested, going so far as to wear a convincing smile. "I would be a more than willing student."

"No doubt," he sighed. "But I'm afraid you just don't have the power."

We reached the edge of the forest. The Castle Town Watchtower and the city walls, and the spires of Hyrule Castle beyond it, rose up in the west. It looked so peaceful; I braced myself, wondering if the farce would suddenly end, the Calamity beside me would turn into a snarling, raging beast, and the Castle would spontaneously burst into flames. But the morning kept on, unchanged, bathed in warm sunlight and distant birdsong.

I realized I was staring and turned my attention back to him; he was staring at me. An expression crossed his eyes, something like disappointment, and he scowled, moving towards the road again.

"Come on," he growled.

I followed, frowning a little at his sudden change of mood. He had seemed almost amicable when we were talking about his own destruction.

"I have more questions," I ventured, and he sighed in a dramatic display of his long-suffering.

"I don't doubt it."

"Why are you doing this? Why would you voluntarily destroy yourself?" He gave me a deadpan look, eyes darkening, and I grimaced. "I'm not allowed to ask that one."

"No," he confirmed, "you're not."

We fell into a spell of silence as we crossed the last greenbelt of Romani Plains to the road. Then he turned, moving towards Orsedd Bridge, and I blinked, scanning the north road. "We're taking the road beneath Crenel Peak? Isn't it faster to—"

"We head east," he insisted gruffly.

I trotted up to him as he began to leave me behind, still confused by his choice to take the longer route. He was already under the archway that heralded the gateway to Hyrule Field when traveling in the other direction. "But—"

"I know we're both in a hurry to see me dead," he growled, "but the north road would keep us in the shadow of the Castle until we could cross the river."

My brow furrowed. Surely he wasn't worried about being spotted, was he? What could the Castle guards possibly hope to do to him? "What does that matter?"

He pressed his hand tentatively, gently, against the stone of the archway, watching the contact with an intensity I didn't understand. He ran his fingers over it slowly, deliberately, in a gesture that was almost longing.

"It's so tempting," he whispered, something animal and dark in his tone that made my blood chill. "You have your instincts. I have mine. It would be so easy… to just reach out…"

He closed his eyes, laying his forehead against the stone, and took a shuddering breath. I watched him, stomach knotting, knowing I should be afraid but not yet knowing why. When he opened his eyes again, the orange threads in them were glowing bright amidst the blue, and the breath stole right out of my chest.

"To just reach out and destroy it."

The stone under his hand shattered with a sound like thunder, the archway blowing apart above our heads. The force of it sent rubble and dust and splinters of stone heaving in all directions, raining over the field like an inescapable hailstorm. The evil ebbed out of him, snarling, yearning for release, for destruction, smothering me with its darkness. It coiled around me, _so_ much stronger than it had been when he came out of the fissure, promising decay and ruin and pain, swirling behind my eyes and dripping on my tongue and striking the purest kind of fear deep into my heart.

And without thinking, I ran.

I called upon the goddess, throwing myself across Hyrule, as far from him as I could possibly get. Fields and hills rushed past in a blur; I weaved, half-blind, driven by instinct, through forests, through water; and at the edge of my consciousness, awakening with a snarl of rage, I felt him pursuing.

The Calamity rushed after me with speed that defied logic, darkening my mind as he drew closer like a shadow. I drank deep of panic, feeding off the adrenaline, but the shadow only grew, and grew, and grew. Finally his hand clamped down on my wrist and I screamed.

I thrashed against his hold, light blazing from me desperately as I tried to break free, as the battle between us transcended our physical forms, escalating to a war of light. With the same suddenness, the same severity of our first battle, he stamped out my light, trapping me in a painful grip against his chest. I felt his hot, furious breath against my cheek, the burning, icy sensation of his arms holding me tight, rendering me helpless. The primal, ancient fear of him buried deep within me writhed to life, and another screamed tore out of me, a long, awful sound that grated against my own ears as tears slid hot trails down my cheeks.

His voice was a roar, deafening and enraged, his grip tightening as he shouted in a punishment that efficiently killed my will to struggle. "Do not run from me! I will reduce this world to rubble and ash if you run again! Do you understand?"

I gasped between sobs, trying to breathe through fear. Finally, I nodded weakly, unable to manage much else besides the soft, pathetic sounds leaving me with every breath. He dropped me and I collapsed to my hands and knees, an exhausted, frightened mess. I held myself tight, stealing a glance in his direction as I tried to pull myself together. He seemed to be doing the same, his breath shuddering out of him as he worked to be calm.

We gave each other a moment, and I let myself hiccup a few more times before I tried to speak again. My voice was a sad warble. "I didn't mean to run. You frightened me."

He sighed, running a hand tersely through his hair. He turned and knelt in front of me, taking my shoulders in his hands that were so warm and so cold at once. His voice was controlled, but his grip betrayed his tension. "You have to fight your instincts, Zelda, just like I have to fight mine. You can't run from me again. You're the only thing keeping me from burning everything I touch, do you understand? If you leave me, there will be no one to stop me when I—"

He paused, the muscles jumping in his face, and he stood again, turning his back on me.

I sniffled, holding myself tighter. I didn't even know where we were; our merry chase seemed to have taken us far, though, with a chill in the air I hadn't felt on the plains. I croaked, "How do you know my name?"

"What?"

He had turned, and we were staring dumbly at each other in the sun. A wind carried over the wilds, tangling my hair, and I absently brushed it away. His eyes were glued to mine, a war of blue and orange lit by the daylight.

"You called me Zelda," I clarified in a tiny voice.

He stared at me until neither of us could take it anymore. He looked away, sighing quietly, so imperceptibly it could've been the wind.

"You're always Zelda," he said.

And that was the end of that.


	3. Duality

Running had been a mistake. I thought my trembling had been just a side effect of adrenaline, but when I couldn't stop shaking long after the fear had passed I realized it was from overexertion. I had to stop for rest frequently, making our journey that much slower.

Not to mention it had agitated the Calamity, who had since taken to hovering too close for comfort whenever we stopped and constantly glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was still there.

Our mad dash had taken us all the way to the edge of the Faron Grasslands, just about as far from the Great Hyrule Forest as one could get.

The Calamity wasn't happy about that, either.

I stumbled again, for the umpteenth time that day. But instead of growling at me to keep up as he had every other time, the Calamity sighed, scowling, and walked back to help me to my feet. When he didn't let go of my arm, I froze.

"I'm all right," I protested quietly.

He ignored me. His gaze was fixed on the horizon, power building behind his eyes, and his hold on me tightened just as he took a purposeful step. That step sent us spiraling over a blur of landscape that tumbled sickeningly by, and an instant later I found myself collapsed dizzily on the shores of Lake Hylia. A new wave of exhaustion washed over me as the borrowed power drained away, wracking my body with chills and aches.

"Drink," he growled, and I managed to drag myself close enough to the water's edge to reach my hands in. I drank until my throat ached from the cold.

By the time I was done he had already sparked a blazing fire and was roasting a fish skewered on a makeshift spit. With a tremor of disgust I realized it wasn't quite dead yet. Still, I moved closer, drawn by the heat.

"That was awful," I finally managed, wiping my mouth against the back of my hand.

"Your body is giving out on you," he murmured, frowning. He tousled the fire with a wave of his hand, willing it to burn brighter, and sighed once impatiently. "You're too fragile."

I was too tired to take offense. _Beyond_ tired. I watched the pale tongues of flame lick at the dwindling light, the trembling slowly beginning to subside. "We could be at the mouth of the forest in less than a day, traveling like that."

"Yes. But you'll need your strength once we reach the Lost Woods. It saps too much power."

My skin prickled feverishly again in the silence that followed; even surrounded by the relative peace of the lake, the darkness ebbing off him in waves was going to prevent any real rest. My fingers bit into the dirt and wet rock, splaying in the short grass, feeling for the familiarity of it like an anchor. A breeze raked over the water, pulling at the fire and my hair.

"Why are you really taking me there?" I whispered, asking the wind as much as I was asking him. "What in all the realms could you possibly need me for?"

He eyed me quietly. "Do you doubt your own strength? Or my intentions?"

"Both, I suppose."

"Greater heroes than you have failed where I was concerned," he said, turning the spit once. "Don't let your failure to contain me make you question your own power, or your destiny."

I watched him, bemused, lips parting, but swallowed my inquisitive reply. Reassurance was hardly the response I'd been expecting. "And as for the other?"

"I am a demon," he said simply, the orange filament in his eyes glinting in the firelight. "You'd be a fool not to."

"So it was a lie?"

"I didn't say that. But would denying it make a difference?"

I sighed, bristling at the conclusion. There was so much at stake— _too_ much. I didn't understand how he could expect me to operate under a veil of doubt and half-truths.

"If what you say is true, then we are working towards a common goal," I reasoned aloud. "Even you must be capable of some degree of honesty."

He glared. "What's your point?"

"We could come to an understanding. This would be so much easier if I could trust that you would at least—"

"No."

"Why?" I demanded. "I can't in good conscience follow you blindly towards some unknown end!"

"You don't have a choice," he snapped. Then he visibly checked, and I reined myself in, too, knowing it would be unwise to provoke him. "And neither do I."

I frowned, questions burning in my throat like coals. The disjointed, untethered threads of him drifted aimlessly around my head, leading me nowhere. An obsession with a Sword he could never touch; his resentment when I had asked for the truth of a misremembered legend; the obstinate, unswerving notion that any attempt to forge trust between us was unallowable; and now, a sudden admission that he felt he had no choice.

I took a chance. "Meaning?"

"Meaning I will drag you to that pedestal by your hair if I have to."

I sighed, crossing my arms. "That won't be necessary. I can't leave you to your own ends. We can make it back to the plains by nightfall."

He scoffed. "You'll be useless to me if you fall apart on the road. We spend the night here."

"But it's not even sunset—"

"Yet another inconvenience caused by your little jaunt," he sneered. Then he sighed irritably, like he was reprimanding a child. "You're in no condition to travel."

"It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't blasted that archway into oblivion," I batted back, defending myself before I could think better of it, and he growled aloud, his tolerance strained to the limit.

"Do I ask you not to sleep? Not to breathe?" he demanded. "Yet you expect me not to destroy."

I narrowed my eyes at him, disgusted. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"It's a great deal of trouble, actually," he bit back, and then he turned the spit once, frustrated, and we fell into another strained spell of silence. Then he took the skewer off the fire and shoved it into my hands. "Eat."

I did as I was told without arguing for a change, picking at the crisped scales, and gingerly tasted a piece. The meat was warm, and I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I hadn't had a proper meal since before he had taken me, and I'd expended tremendous energy since then.

I watched him carefully when I was done, pressing my mouth against the back of my hand. "You aren't going to eat?"

He snorted. "I don't eat."

"You were eating an apple this morning."

His eyes slid to me again, flashing with irritation, and the sigh he let out his nose was like the one my father would loose whenever he had to pray to the goddesses for patience. "It was an experiment."

I tilted my head thoughtfully, trying to puzzle him out. "You don't eat? Not at all? You must need some kind of nourishment—"

"Yes, and I'm abstaining, for your sake," he snapped acidly. Then his eyes pierced into mine, two-toned and lustrous in the firelight, and he growled, "Now sleep."

I took a hasty breath to object, but before I could form the words he was sending me spiraling under again. As my eyes closed and my consciousness slipped out of my grasp, I felt my body give out, and his unmistakable touch, both warm and cold, cushioning my head before it could hit the ground.

In my dreams, something monstrous, full of smoke and hate, was roiling out of the sea, and the Calamity, clenching the Blade of Evil's Bane in his fist, stood between us, his silhouette ringed in darkness and light. The storm descended on him, engulfing him with deafening winds and lightning strikes. But he let it come, motionless, standing his ground even as it swallowed him whole.

The fire was out when I came to, and I shuddered gently against the chill.

There was dry, brittle grass beneath me; it smelled of mesa winds and too much sunlight. I blinked as I sat upright, trying to get my bearings. We weren't at Lake Hylia.

There was desolation as far as the eye could see—nothing but charred remains where life once was, blackened, shriveled, sapped of form and color and dusted with ash. The air smelled of fire and charcoal, and smoke rose out of the dust like so many spirits trying to ascend. My eyes darted along the devastated plain, to the crags that flanked it, to the mutilated, scorched figures breaking out of the ground that had once been the trees, and I covered my mouth, biting back a gasp or a scream. In the fog of the disorientation and the dread, I latched onto a scrap of familiarity: the disfigured, towering trees bent and broken over the valley. They could only have been the wasted remnants of the Taobab Grasslands.

A sound broke in my throat; I whispered, "What have you done?"

"It will grow back." His voice, unaffected, dispassionate, sounded from so close by that I held my breath in silent alarm. He was just at my back. I turned, very slowly, to glare at him. He took a handful of the grayed sand, watching it trickle out of his open palm. "In a hundred years or so."

My eyes burned with angry tears and ash. I couldn't even save _this_ from him. I hated how powerless I felt, lashing out with what little I had.

"How did we get here?" I demanded, but for all the anger I infused into my voice he wasn't the least bit disturbed.

"I carried you."

My stomach roiled, and I closed my eyes, trying to quell my nerves and not picture myself in his arms, limp and helpless, as he stalked across Hyrule under a faint sliver of the moon.

"Why?" I hissed, my voice a bitter whisper. "Why would you do this?"

"Do you know what lies between us and the Woods?" he asked, quietly, and I mentally traced the route beside the Great Plateau, speckled with settlements: the Outpost, Gatepost Town, Deya Village, Kolomo Garrison, the fragile intersections of so many lives. He couldn't have known those settlements from his own era. He must have been able to sense them—smell them, like a ravenous beast can smell blood. His eyes, cobalt blue in the morning light, ringed in so many orange threads, peered curiously into mine. "If you had to walk through a lush orchard, heavy with fruit, but you weren't allowed to take any, would you trust yourself to do it hungry?"

My mouth quivered, and I had to clench my jaw to still it. "You're a monster."

"Yes," he said, so softly my brow puckered in surprise, and then he stood, leaving me in my small patch of untouched grass, and wandered into the wasteland he had made, kicking up dust and ash. He called, weaving through blackened trees towering like maimed giants, "Come along, Princess."

I quashed the unpleasant tangle of doubt stirring in my chest, moving to follow. More than once, he breathed deep of the destruction, running his hand along scorched trees and through plumes of black smoke. Luxuriating in it. It made my stomach churn. I stepped carefully through a brittle splay of old roots, tangling up out of the sand as though they had tried to escape him. Suddenly he laughed, and my eyes snapped up to his.

"The look on your face," he chided, smirking roguishly. "The crown princess of Hyrule, the blessed daughter of Hylia—so easily riled."

I glared back icily. "The Incarnation of Hate—reduced to taunting mortals."

He crossed his arms, leaning against one of the ruined trees as he watched me. "I can go back to razing continents, if you'd prefer."

"No," I admitted sourly. "I would not prefer it."

His smile widened. "Pity."

I waited in stony silence for him to do something—move, or mock me some more. But he seemed content watching me bristle.

"You're a lot like her, you know," he finally observed. "Your predecessor, I mean. Stubborn, self-righteous—that gentle flush when you're angry."

I scowled, painfully aware of the blood rushing to my cheeks. He shrugged off the tree and moved closer, his eyes narrowing as he inspected me.

"She was older than you are now, though. Wiser. And your eyes are the wrong color." He tilted my chin up gently with the edge of his finger, with ice and fire on my skin that was becoming too familiar. "Green, like the Faron Sea in the dawn."

He held me like that a moment longer, rendering me motionless while he studied them. Cold slithered down my jawline, sprawling along my bones like hoarfrost. I snapped my face aside when he slid his fingers away, trying to hide my disquiet beneath a veil of contempt.

"If my eyes don't please you, you're welcome to not look at them."

"I didn't say that."

He was grinning, and I flushed angrier, my heart stammering unevenly through my jugular. But I checked before I spoke again, knowing that another bitter retort would only serve to amuse him. Enduring his mockery was a relatively small price to pay for his sudden good mood. I walked north, breathing deeply when my nerves crackled in protest as I turned my back on him. The Great Plateau rose up like a mighty sentinel at the end of the plain, impassively overlooking the destruction. I made for the eastern ridge of the canyon, where the staggered outcroppings made the wall less impassable.

"Did you drag her all over Hyrule, too?" I muttered, doing my best to act disinterested as I tried to riddle out the past he protected so fervently. "She must have made quite the impression if you can even remember the color of her eyes."

"Does it come as a surprise that I would commit to memory the face of the entity who has imprisoned me in endless oblivion too many times to count?" I hesitated as I approached the canyon wall, fearing the conversation had turned downhill irretrievably, but he chuckled once. "I think you underestimate how much I hate you."

I braced my hands on the stone, resisting the urge to roll my eyes, and lifted myself to the first summit. The damage was becoming less apparent as we scaled, singed grass and scored rock gradually giving way to green slopes and untouched boulders. He had completely dodged the question, though, so I tried something else.

My eyes trailed the stone for a foothold as I reached a taller obstacle. "Why take me along, then?"

When I looked up he had gotten ahead, and was complacently offering me his hand. I took it begrudgingly, letting him lift me onto the lip of the path, and he gave me a small, wicked smirk. "Snack for the road."

I huffed loudly, brushing past him again. His good mood didn't make him any less elusive; if anything, it only made him more annoying. I chose my route with care, managing to reach the crest of the ridge without needing his assistance again. The slope on the other side was incredibly steep, lush with dewy grass and ribbed with dark stone, swept regularly by winds off Lake Hylia. I forced myself to take the first steps of what I knew would be a slow, treacherous descent.

It wasn't long until the slick footing got the better of me, but he caught my elbow before I could plummet down the hillside. I snatched it back irritably.

"Stop touching me," I snapped.

He complied, letting me slide roughly onto my bottom when the slope turned slippery again not ten steps later. I sighed, closing my eyes and pressing my forehead against my hands as I sat exasperatedly where I had fallen. The Calamity crouched beside me, wearing a much smaller, much less infuriating smile than I deserved, turning his hand over in offering. I stared at it, defeated and tired.

"I need answers."

"No. You need wisdom. Which you've been displaying very little of, I might add."

I had the gall to scoff. "What do you know of wisdom?"

"It's how you've always beaten me before," he said, his lip quirking up unexpectedly. "Now, are you badly bruised anywhere else besides your pride? Or can we go on?"

I growled, batting his upturned hand away from where it was still hovering.

I led the way down the snaking path along the base of the Great Plateau until the cliffside opened to the southern plains of Central Hyrule, a tumble of soft greens and outcroppings shadowed by the Eastern Abbey and flanked by the Hylia River. The air grew warmer as we left the lake behind, filling with the soft, earthy scent of prairie grass, until, finally, glinting like beacons in the sunlight, the stone of the Outpost settlements rose up over the hillside in the distance.

I tensed as we walked, imagining the lives that wandered, defenseless and oblivious to the danger, within those walls. Images of the destruction in Taobab rose behind my eyes unbidden, and I pictured mutilated, scorched bodies rising over the canyon instead of trees.

I closed my eyes, suppressing a shudder. We were flanked by settlements, making avoiding an intersection with my people impossible without significant backtracking; we would have to retreat across the Bridge of Hylia again, cross the Farosh Hills, and skirt the treacherous edge of the Dueling Peaks. It would take days—days I was sure the Calamity wouldn't give me.

Dread closed around my throat like the grip of a bony hand. My pulse quickened and my feet shuffled to a stop. I wouldn't be able to defend them, not if he turned. He drew up beside me, watching with dark, amused eyes.

"Nervous?"

My lips pressed into a thin, embittered line. "I don't expect you to understand."

"You don't give me enough credit," he tsked. "I understand perfectly. You're about to lead the Scourge of Hyrule right into the heart of civilization, knowing you couldn't save them from me if you tried. I don't envy you."

I turned my head so I wouldn't have to look at him, staring over the swathe of hillside towering over the riverbank. I didn't know if I wanted to shout, or scream, or run; my thoughts wandered to the day before, to the glazed, almost spellbound expression that had slipped over his features before he gave in to the urge to destroy the archway. Instinct, he had called it. It made my stomach knot. If destruction was so deeply ingrained in his nature, it hardly mattered what his intentions were.

He reached out, turning me back to face him again with cool, blistering fingers under my chin, searching my eyes. His touch jolted through my arms and down my spine, and his eyes, glacial, ribboned, seemed to leech whatever warmth was leftover right out of me.

"Stop thinking about it," he told me, finally, dropping his hand, and I took a soft, tremulous breath in relief. "Panicking is not helping your cause."

My teeth clicked shut. "I'm not panicking!"

"But you are afraid," he murmured, a displeased undercurrent in his voice. His gaze slid to the Outpost; he took a deep breath, like an animal scenting the air, and his mouth tugged down. "I can taste your fear."

My body reacted to his words before my mind did, hair standing on end, blood quickening, as though it knew what sort of danger that meant for it. More instincts, swelling to the fore and reinforcing my misgivings about his.

"Couldn't we jump through?" I pleaded, trying not to sound desperate. "Like we did when you brought us to Lake Hylia?"

"I'd rather not," he frowned. "That could compromise both of us. I wouldn't risk it so close to a settlement."

"Is it really so hard for you?" I glared, as revolted as I was incredulous. "To _not_ destroy every living thing you come across?"

His eyes searched mine, just as incredulous, and arguably even more troubled. " _Yes_."

"All the more reason to use magic," I murmured, swallowing more doubt.

"Leaving your world intact is all about restraint. The more in control I am, the better—and exhausting myself with unnecessary teleporting every time you lose your nerve would jeopardize that. Is that what you want?"

I came dangerously close to sulking. "No."

"And this," he murmured, his hand reaching out slowly to touch my throat. His fingertips found my pulse, applying gentle pressure, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of it; the way it stammered and raced across his touch, sloshing and pounding against the pliant confines of my veins; how it must've felt to him, warm and titillating; what my fear must've tasted like. My eyelids felt weighted as I listened, as I fixated on the sensation of his touch giving under the heavy, unending throb of my artery. He whispered, "This doesn't make it any easier, either."

In that moment I was numb. If he had made to snap my neck, I wouldn't even have resisted. His touch was an anesthetic, cooling my blood, rendering me pliable and insensitive. All I knew was my pulse, throbbing in my ears and drumming against his fingers. Then he dropped his hand, and I could breathe again.

"Calm down," he insisted quietly, almost soothingly. "It will be fine."

He turned and started down the road again, leaving me trembling in his wake. I managed, before he got too far, "That's easier said than done."

He glanced back once, his lip quirking up crookedly. "Would it help if I gave you my word?"

"I don't know. I doubt it." I forced my feet forward, finally, falling in step with him, and glanced furtively at his profile. "Would you?"

"If you like."

I frowned, consumed with the arguable worth of his word, and the strangeness of his offer, and the disaster we were unflinchingly walking into.

"They won't recognize you," he said, and it was so unexpected I blinked.

"What?"

"Their princess just faced the Great Calamity in battle and went missing," he breathed. "We would draw too much attention. I've cast a glamour."

I glanced at the unchanged furl of hair draped over my shoulder, my dirty fingertips, felt at the familiar ridge of my nose. Nothing seemed different.

"It's only an illusion of obscurity," he clarified, his lip quirking in amusement. "The harder they look, the less interesting you'll seem. I couldn't bear to actually change your face; where would we be without those pretty green eyes of yours?"

I scoffed, glaring again, my fear suddenly forgotten in the rush of annoyance that followed, and he smirked. It wasn't until later on, when we were stepping over the boundary into the village, that it occurred to me that that may have been the point.

As promised, no one acknowledged us much as we skirted the edge of the settlement. Outside of the occasional polite nod, no one greeted us, and whenever someone looked long enough to discern who I was, the recognition would fade from their eyes and they abruptly lost interest. We hugged the east edge of the village; for all his talk of promises and precautions, he didn't seem eager to go through the heart of it, either.

"Why don't they feel you?" I murmured, my boots crunching on the dust and gravel as we traversed the road. "Shouldn't their instincts send them running?"

"Oh, they feel it," he mused, gesturing with his chin at the subtle frowns that would grace their expressions as we passed, the slightly wider berth they would unconsciously give him. "They just don't know enough to pinpoint it. The obscurity keeps them ignorant."

I chewed my lip, more interested than I should have been. 'Inappropriate' hardly began to describe hobnobbing with an evil tyrant over _spellcraft_ when he was posing an imminent threat to my people. But there was so much about magic I still didn't understand, even despite my birthright, and the way he used it so easily was really quite fascinating.

"I don't understand you at all," I breathed, giving a passerby a soft smile at odds with my exasperated tone. "You're supposed to be this demon, this embodiment of evil and hatred—and I know you are. I can feel it. But you don't act on it."

He only shrugged. "I doubt you ever will."

"I might if you explained yourself, even a little."

I pursed my lips, waiting for a retort or some scrap of revelation. I sighed hotly when it became apparent he wasn't going to answer, and he smiled suddenly, a ribbon of white teeth peeking out from between his lips.

"That really eats you up, doesn't it?"

"That none of this makes any sense? That you insist on making me an accessory to whatever this is without the slightest explanation?" I snapped. "Yes, it does!"

"That's not it. You just don't like not having all the answers," he smirked. "I've already told where we're going and why. But that's not enough for you."

"That wouldn't be enough for any sane person."

"I'm helping you save your kingdom and bring about a golden age that will last an eternity. And you're put out that you can't quite pinpoint my motive."

"Greatly disturbed is more like it," I muttered, folding my arms stubbornly.

"Of all the things about me to find disturbing," he mused, smiling gently, and I couldn't find words to reply.

We reached the other side of the village without incident and headed for the river, following its winding edge north. He let me stop twice to rest on the bank, drink, and have a little to eat, and when I slipped on a slick rock as we were walking and tumbled into the shallow water, he'd laughed at me.

Before dusk, we reached the clutch of woods wedged between the Bottomless Swamp and the Hylia River. As my stamina was still relatively depleted, he chose to stop for the night there, and quickly set a fire and fixed me another dinner that he ordered me to eat.

I picked at the roasted fish and mushrooms tiredly, huddled against the warmth of the fire, and he watched me with his usual steely gaze.

"At the risk of sounding impudent, I have a request," I prompted, eyeing him over my skewer. He quirked a cynical brow, but said nothing, so I continued. "I'd like to fall asleep on my own tonight, if it's not too much trouble."

"You can try," he scoffed. "But I doubt you'll be able to. Your instincts are attuned to detect evil—to keep you alert in the presence of danger. It's hard to fall asleep when every nerve in your body is screaming at you to run."

"I've gotten pretty good at ignoring those signals recently," I pointed out. I expected him to scoff or smirk, but his mouth twisted into a frown.

"You shouldn't get complacent," he murmured. "You have those instincts for a reason."

I made a noncommittal sound in my throat, tossing my empty skewer into the flames, but when I looked back up he was gone. Then I felt his breath feathering the back of my neck and stiffened, every alarm in my body raised against his proximity.

"Don't think that because I haven't harmed you yet means that I can't, or that I won't," he murmured against my ear. The hair on the back of my neck rose at the promise in his voice, my heart thudding unevenly in my chest. "I am what I am. A monster. A demon. The Calamity. And you… you're just a girl, trying to wield a power you don't understand."

He stroked my face slowly, unexpectedly, and I shuddered away from his touch, raising my hand in a reflex to bat him away, but he grabbed my wrist, his fingers biting into my palm. I looked over my shoulder, startled, and met his eyes, sapphire and amber in the firelight.

"You cannot trust me," he echoed, running fingers that chilled and burned down the arch of my neck and watching him with unnerving interest. My eyes reflexively closed and my breath tremored out of me, the instinct to run knotting in my chest. I tried to pull my hand away, but his grip was like a vise.

"Let go," I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I tried again, but he didn't relent.

He leaned closer, his mouth hovering over my ear, and my throat went thick with salt. It felt like death itself was touching me, refusing to let me go. " _Never_ let your guard down."

Hot tears spilled, unbidden, down my cheeks, and that seemed to satisfy him. He let my hand drop, standing and walking away from the ring of the fire into the night.

"Try to sleep, if you can," he called, growing more distant, and I didn't know if it was a taunt or not.

I pressed my mouth against my hand, swallowing a sob. I hated feeling this strange, morbid fear whenever he wanted. It didn't make sense; in some ways he was more like a knight protector than he was like an enemy, always seeing to it that I had sufficient food, water, warmth, and rest. But, like turning the earth on its axis between night and day, he could change so quickly, making my skin crawl with the tone of his voice or his gentlest touch in spite of the fact that he had never actually gone so far as to harm me—even sparing the Outpost and everyone in it. I supposed it was as he had said: it was instincts, rooted deep in my mind and my body, that made me cower, that were meant to protect me from monsters like him.

Still, the shift was so drastic it made me feel like I was dealing with two separate people.

I wiped the tears away, irritated and exhausted, and curled up beside the fire. As he had predicted, sleep seemed incredibly far away. Eventually, though, as the fire began dying down, I started to drift off.

As I slipped under, an image rose to the surface of my consciousness like flotsam. It was only a blur at first; it eased gently into focus, sharpening each of my senses in tandem until it became as real and as vivid as any waking moment. And it was the most horrific thing I had ever seen.

Fire rained from the heavens, consuming the sky in burning embers and smoke. Every breath burned, and my eyes stung from the heat and ash. Whorls of black and amethyst seeped out of the ground around me, thick and foul and full of poison. The earth and the sky shook with sounds like thunder, mingling with white light and showers of blue sparks that never seemed to end.

The Calamity stood not far from me, a beacon of life and light in the chaos, wielding a blade that glowed with holy light in the darkness.

"Zelda, _now!_ "

I could feel it, the strain on my mind and my body as I struggled with something unseen and terrifying. I responded with a voice that was mine and yet not mine, familiar but strange, right but wrong, like something I had forgotten once.

"I can't!" I cried, my voice drowned out by the commotion.

He made his way closer, arcing his blade through plumes of malice and fireballs that seemed intent on keeping us apart. He knelt near me, his eyes clear, and full of fire, and startlingly, pristinely blue. His voice was raised over the chaos, urgent and desperate. "What do you need?"

"I don't know—a container, a vessel—"

A single, orange eye opened out of the darkness, and I screamed as something vile and viscous hurtled towards us. He shielded me with his body, but then the sound of so many chains raking over each other flew around us, and something I couldn't quite make out—blue-eyed, spindly-legged, metallic—placed itself between us and absorbed the blow, exploding in a flourish of azure lightning and harsh white light.

His eyes, so furious and blue, snapped back to mine as he shouted again over the turmoil. "What kind of container?"

"Something—something living, something I could tie it to—" I shook my head, hopelessly reaching for an answer. "Something strong enough to withstand the power of the gods—"

His eyes locked with mine, and I saw reflected in them everything he must have seen in mine: heartache; hopelessness; fear.

And determination, resolute and unstoppable, that no darkness could ever hope to smother.


	4. Guidance

I started awake to a warm, decidedly serene morning. Birdsong and sunlight filtered through the trees, and a gentle breeze off the river tousled the leaves. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my galloping heart. The dream had felt so incredibly _real_ …

I scanned the woods for the Calamity, but for now I was alone. I got to my feet and made my way to the river's edge, washing the grime from the road off my face and hands. My reflection stared up at me, troubled, quivering and glistening in the current once the waters calmed. The image was bedraggled, with knotted hair and dirt-stained clothes.

"What have you gotten yourself into, Zelda?" I asked my reflection. It arched a slender brow at me, lobbing the question back.

I sighed, tracing thoughts upstream and lingering over the details of the dream. So little of it had made sense. The sword the Calamity had been wielding was unmistakably the Blade of Evil's Bane—which was impossible, because nothing evil could ever touch it and survive. So many of the sounds and lights were unfamiliar, _unnatural_ , like nothing I had ever heard before, and I wasn't sure how my mind could've conjured such things. He had been different, too. His eyes had been wholly, pristinely blue, untainted by the brilliant orange coils I was used to…

Then I saw them, staring up at me from the water, and spun.

"You startled me," I said, breathless.

He didn't smile, all trace of yesterday's jesting mood unaccountably missing. "There's a crossing ahead. We'll take the east road, and reach the edge of the Lost Woods by nightfall. I trust you won't object this time around?"

I nodded, unnerved by his icy demeanor.

"Good," he muttered. "We'll reach the Sword tomorrow and be done with this."

I got to my feet wordlessly and followed as he stalked back into the forest, uneasy. Whatever progress I had made with him the day before seemed to have reverted overnight, and if his expression was any indication, things may have gotten worse. I foraged a simple breakfast as we moved north, and we crossed the Rebonae Bridge within the hour.

Through the course of the morning it became apparent that his mood had soured even more than I'd feared. I was never able to move fast enough for him, often earning an impatient growl to keep pace. The less forgiving terrain through the Crenel Hills made appeasing him especially difficult, and when he finally let me take a rest near the Thims crossing I all but collapsed on the riverbank.

Bitterness rose in my throat as I knelt to drink, feeling battered beyond recognition. His impatience with me, his sudden unwillingness to speak except to punish me, had me set on edge, and I swallowed frustrated tears along with the cool river water. I wiped the back of my hand against my mouth when I finished, panting. My reflection stared broodingly back at me on the trembling surface.

Hatred. That's what had colored his every glance, his every gesture and cutting remark over the course of the morning. Only I didn't know if it was welling up from somewhere deep within him, inseparable from his personality, or if I had done something to earn it. I glanced cautiously in his direction; he was standing on the bridge with his back to me, staring north towards the swollen shape of the forest canopy rising ponderously on the horizon.

And I was suddenly struck with the oddest feeling that we had been here together before.

"That's enough," he called when I had barely caught my breath, and I sighed as I heaved myself back onto shaking legs, too proud to complain.

We made our way up Trilby Plain in the heat of the noon hour, and I was teetering on the brink of exhaustion. My legs trembled with every step, and more than once I stumbled over uneven footing. Then they gave out on me completely as the muscles buckled with a change in the slope, bringing me to my knees, and as I went to pick myself up he was suddenly there doing it for me.

A small, surprised cry left my throat as he grabbed my forearm and heaved me to my feet.

"Let me go," I demanded, startled, his fingers biting painfully beneath my wrist.

" _Stop_ slowing me down," he growled, and I winced when his grip tightened reflexively with his words.

"I'm going as fast as I can," I tried to bite back, but it came out too weak to resemble anything close to fighting words. "You're being unreasonable!"

"And you're being pathetic," he hissed, pulling me closer as he glowered. "You're _weak,_ undisciplined, wielding your power around aimlessly like a child!"

"Stop," I gasped quietly, trying to pry his hand off my arm as the discomfort increased, flaring into pain.

"I should just kill you now," he sneered. "You'd be reborn as someone more worthy, and I wouldn't have to put up with your incompetence!"

"You're hurting me," I warbled, tears stinging my eyes from the pain and his unaccountable hate.

He let me go and I turned, hiding my face behind a curtain of hair as I cradled my wrist. I heard his irritated sigh and his steps crunching on the road, growing more distant, and slowly made to follow, my throat burning. The pain in my arm gradually dulled, aching when my steps jostled it but tolerable otherwise. It was the sting from his insults that lingered, bruising my confidence. Just yesterday he had told me not to doubt my power or my destiny on account of my failure to contain him.

Less than a day later, and he'd already found other reasons sufficient to discredit me.

I trailed him in tense silence, the distance between us stretching for long intervals as he regularly left me behind without acknowledging my slowness. He let me drink from the river once more when the road forked, and then we followed the road up into the Minshi Woods, the threshold that arched along the Eldin Foothills into the Lost Woods. Thick sunbeams refracted through the gnarled branches, filling the forest with rich orange light, and the Calamity finally slowed, moving over the delicate silence of the wood without disturbing the underbrush as though it were second nature.

We reached the mouth of the Lost Woods just before sunset. The canopy and the enchantment of the fog were so dense the brilliant veins of sunlight splitting the horizon were barely visible. Ancient stone archways, half-eaten by time and vines, marked the inconspicuous boundary where the magic began, and he ignited a flickering spark near them with a gesture to throw bracken on.

I settled next to it wordlessly, watching him work. Few passersby were foolhardy enough to venture into the forest's enchantment, so there were plenty of fallen branches suitable for firewood scattered nearby. Only Hylian Knights were taught the secret of navigating the magic by the royal family. There hadn't been one among them that could draw the sword the mist protected.

When the fire was healthily ablaze, he left me to trap an animal for supper, and returned as the twilight was bleeding into dusk with flayed and skewered hare—already dead, I noted with some relief. He didn't speak as he set it roasting, but his silence seemed more preoccupied than it did hateful. I was too tired to be very invested in that change, which was negligible. Not having eaten since breakfast, and having been forced to march at a demanding pace for most of the day, I found myself disinclined to waste much energy on him at all.

He handed me the spit when the meat was cooked through, and I balanced it across my knees, picking at it with my good hand. I kept the other tucked in my lap while I ate; it was still aching and sent pain shooting up my arm whenever I tried to flex my fingers. I was ravenous and finished the meal off quickly, tossing the skewer into the flames afterwards. I carelessly let my gaze wander and noticed how intently he was watching me, and for the briefest moment I locked eyes with him. I fixated on the fire again, hoping he would lose interest, but the damage was already done. I could feel him eyeing me in the firelight. It made my pulse throb unpleasantly.

"How badly did I hurt you?"

I didn't answer, stubbornly drawing my arm further into my lap without meeting his gaze. The last thing I wanted was to give him further reason to think me weak. Holding my own was difficult enough as it was.

But when he rose from his seat and knelt beside me, cradling my arm in his hands by the elbow and wrist, I didn't fight him, afraid that resisting would exacerbate the soreness. He drew it off my lap slowly, studying the bruise blossoming across my skin in the firelight. He traced the discoloration, and I held my breath; and then, gently, slowly, he felt up the length of my forearm, flooding me with a cool rush of magic that mended bone and ligament as he went, and the pain evaporated with it. His hand closed around mine, his fingers pressing softly into my palm as he stitched up the last of the damage.

"You should've said something."

I swallowed and slowly met vibrant, warring eyes. I couldn't formulate a coherent response; my mind snagged on bits of a bitter retort, thanks, questions, dredging up nothing useful. The dream had drifted back into my mind's eye, when he had looked at me with similar concern out of radiant, untainted blue eyes.

Finally, I muttered, "I was too proud."

He watched me, eyes clouded with thought, and his frown deepened. "Do you not know how to heal?"

"My mother died when I was young. My training was very basic."

"Only the sealing?"

I nodded minutely, a little ashamed to admit it. He released my hand, finally, and unfastened his right gauntlet. Then he reached for the small knife on his belt. At first the hilt seemed to have no blade at all; then a sky blue shaft materialized out of it and caught light, and he dragged it across the ridge of his exposed palm, leaving a welling trail of red in its wake. He offered it to me, and I took it cautiously in both hands, too surprised to question it.

"I don't know how—" I stammered, but he silence me with a look that was surprisingly patient.

"Just try," he murmured. "It's like unspooling thread."

My brow furrowed at the odd metaphor as I cradled his injured hand in mine, lifting my fingers to trace the wound. I ran them slowly along the edge, channeling power into my fingertips, but it didn't want to go anywhere. It lingered under my skin like water pooling in a valley.

"You haven't learned elements either," he guessed, and I pursed my lips, trying to focus on the task at hand. He sighed, shifting without jostling my work. "I should've started teaching you sooner."

I had mimicked the motions he had used to heal my arm three times, but nothing was happening. I let my eyes flicker up to his, briefly, as I made a fourth attempt. "What do you mean?"

"I won't be traveling with you after tomorrow. You don't even know how to light your own fires. Heaven forbid you should sprain your ankle or break a bone." He stilled my wrist with his good hand, correcting the bend of my knuckles. "Like unspooling thread."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Stop overthinking it. Let your power work for you."

I took a breath, refocusing my energy and trying again, forcing my reservations beneath the surface and opening my mind to the possibility. Eventually I felt it, just a trickle, flowing through my fingertips where we touched and tapping into my power, tugging downward in a small stream like a single, slender cord, unraveling out of me like…

"It is like unspooling thread," I murmured, watching the wound begin to mend. It was slow going, the pull on the phantom spool spanning my knuckles fluctuating sporadically between taut and slack as I tried to find a rhythm. The flesh knitted, weaving evenly in time with the unraveling sensation. I closed his fingers over his palm when I was finished, holding his hand closed while I searched for words. "After tomorrow. You mean after you're destroyed."

"Have you decided to believe me about that?"

"I suppose."

His eyes scanned my face in the firelight, guarded. He reached his hand back silently and slid it into the fire, bringing it back holding a tongue of shuddering flame. I stared quietly, watching apprehensively as he took my wrist and laid the fire gently in my palm. When he was satisfied he pulled his hands away, letting me hold it alone. It licked just above my palm, flickering hungrily in all directions as it sought something to consume.

"Feed it a little," he instructed quietly as it began to dwindle, and I did my best, channeling my own warmth towards it. The flame lapped at my energy, renewing off the sustenance I offered. Then he murmured, "Yes. After I'm destroyed."

My concentration faltered and the flicker suddenly went out. I expected him to growl at my ineptitude, but instead he wordlessly took my right hand again with his, palm up, and guided me towards the fire. I got to my knees beside him, letting his hand under mine take us into the flames. The heat and the light glided over my skin like silk, floating instead of devouring as his magic kept it from burning us.

"Take some," he directed, his voice uncharacteristically soft against my ear, and as it coalesced above my palm he withdrew our hands. He let go slowly once I had a handle on it, observing, and shook his head once, incredulous. "The bearer of the power of the gods, the strongest magic in all Hyrule—holding fire for the first time."

"No one thought it would be me," I whispered distantly, watching the fire dwindle and flare in my palm as I experimented with withdrawing warmth and then shunting it back again. "My mother's death was unexpected. We all thought…" I pursed my lips, cradling the little flame closer to myself as my thoughts spiraled towards unpleasant places. "No one thought it would be me."

We were silent for a while, listening to hollow winds shifting through the mist at our backs, embers eating through dry twigs, and the subtle breath of the flame I was nursing. At length, he mused, his eyes draped in shadow and colorless, "Including you."

I met his eyes, startled. He seemed to be seeing right through me. It was warm and unnerving at once.

"Of course," I said. I couldn't remember ever having to explain this to anyone. It was... sort of awful. "I was only six years old."

"I didn't think you would be so inexperienced." He sighed, troubled. "This could complicate things."

I stared, absorbing his concern and probably reflecting it tenfold. "How so?"

"Put that out and try making your own. Create the warmth, and then a spark."

I frowned as he sidestepped the question, but complied, closing my hand and letting it go cold, smothering the flame. I started channeling the warmth, and blindly willed my power to spark. My palm was dark except for the spattering firelight. "Nothing's happening."

"Try again."

"But how do I—"

"Stop overanalyzing everything. Stop thinking that you can't."

"It isn't that simple," I countered, frustrated. "How can I do something if I don't even know—"

Then his hands closed around my wrists, and I gasped as power surged through my veins. It coursed through my body, limitless, intense, luminous, pulsating in time with my heartbeat like molten sunlight. My eyes closed reflexively and my head lolled, and I sighed, reveling in the strange sensation.

"The power of the gods is in you," he murmured, sending the power surging again, and I rolled towards it. "Harness it. Stop fearing it. Stop doubting that you're worthy of it."

It was a reservoir, endless, a wellspring bubbling up from some deep, untapped place rooted deep in my being. The power wasn't unfamiliar; I had called on it more times than I could count, training to confront him. But he was right. I did fear it. I never simply let it exist in me, fill me, as it was now. I had always considered myself a vessel, a channel through which that power could manifest itself when Hyrule needed it. But now, luxuriating in it, conducting it through myself, the roles seemed reversed: the _power_ was a channel, at my disposal to use as I pleased.

"Light the spark."

Fire erupted from both my hands, devouring the warmth. He let go of my wrists, but the change hardly registered. I was consumed by the sensation of my own power, by this tiny, insignificant expression of it. I sent fire spiraling upwards in a quivering shaft until it was above the trees; I shaped it to circle us in tortuous rings; I ground it under my fingers into a tame, glowing ember that cast soft light over the night, kept it balanced, shackled, on the edge of my fingertip; and then it burst to life again when I breathed on it.

And he watched, with dark eyes, from across the flames.

I must have passed hours like that: exploring what it meant to hold something that potent, that destructive, on the end of a leash and shape it as I pleased. It was different than the sealing power. That was the goddess executing judgment. But this was something much less holy, much less pure. It was just power, exerting itself on the world. Pulling at elements and banishing helplessness. And it was heady.

It was well into the night when I finally spared him another thought. I was lying on my back, staring up at thousand glistening stars blinking like jewels floating across an inky sea, rolling a silky fireball back and forth across my knuckles, playing mindlessly. I imagined the fireball was Hyrule, suspended precariously in the gaps between my fingers, where just one mistake could send it plummeting. It seemed appropriate.

"You said I complicated things," I prompted, not bothering to look at him. Maybe it was the power, the headiness of it, that made me less inhibited; but in that moment, in that flicker of borrowed strength, I didn't fear him. "My inexperience. What did you mean?"

"I'm going to need your power," he murmured. "Destroying a curse as old and as powerful as I am isn't easy. I was counting on your skills being more refined than they are, but you have the strength. We'll make do."

"Was she much stronger than I am?" I asked, imagining her: a princess, or a queen, a daughter of the royal house whose connection to the goddess was unclouded by doubt and refined in fearless forges. "My predecessor, I mean."

"She was very powerful."

"But you managed to kill her." He didn't respond, and I pursed my lips, thinking. "Did I disappoint you? You were so angry, and I didn't understand it. Was that why? Because I'm not enough like her?"

"No," he said, and I turned at the surprise in his voice, meeting his vivid, two-toned eyes. "It's because you're too much like her."

I turned back to the stars. They glittered dazzlingly in the night sky, stretched across the heavens like teardrops. They were ageless. They must have seen this battle fought dozens of times, goddess and Calamity circling the night, locked in an endless cycle, like the sun and the moon.

I didn't understand him at all. I didn't understand any of this.

"What happened to you, 10,000 years ago?" I breathed. "After so many eons, why are you trying to end yourself?"

He leaned over me from above, his face drifting upside down into my vision.

"Do you know what happens when you start asking about things that don't concern you?"

"You put me to sleep."

He hummed in agreement, running a cool fingertip up the bridge of my nose and across my forehead.

The darkness tumbled over me before his touch reached my hairline.

I drifted through the black into another vision. Sunlight trickled through shuddering leaves and blossoms caught on the wind's breath, flickering in spangled starbursts beneath verdant green veils. The light played on my eyelids with shadows, fluttering over each other while birdsong carried between the pristine stone pillars and the trees from around the sanctuary. I inhaled deep of the warm air, opening my eyes to watch the pale pink petals weave lazily through the sunbeams.

It was like paradise. But when I spoke, in the voice that was mine and not mine, there was an underlying sadness that no amount of paradise could remove.

"Do you ever wonder what you'll do… afterward?"

The Calamity was sprawled on the grass beside me, catnapping beneath oaks and dogwoods. A broadsword in a blue scabbard etched with gold overlay rested near his head, discarded like something forgotten amidst the tranquility. A bird trilled another complex refrain, long and lilting; he opened a single, curious blue eye, and cast it inquiringly in my direction.

"When this is all over, I mean."

He closed it again, folding his arm comfortably behind his head.

"A little."

I braided two blades of grass together between lithe fingers, quietly working up the boldness to press the issue. "Only a little?"

"I'll serve Hyrule wherever she'll have me. There are only a few things I want for myself." He paused, and then shifted onto his side, searching my face, and amended, "Just one thing."

"What would that be?"

I was watching my fingers turn the grass over in my lap, but he didn't answer until I met his eyes; they glinted in the light, touched by the ghost of a smile.

"I think you know."

I smiled, pulse flying, and my gaze flitted back to the grass in my hands. "Have you heard about Maz's latest invention?"

"Another Beast?"

"No. A new kind of Shrine that uses stasis field tech to heal on a cellular level. It's just a prototype, but he says it's powerful enough to bring someone back from the dead."

"Sounds unnatural," he muttered. "Not even you can do that."

"No," I agreed. Then I tilted my head, considering. "Not that I've had much opportunity to try. Maybe I just need a little practice."

"Maybe," he allowed. "All you need is a willing victim."

I smirked at his nonchalance. It was a ridiculous notion; resurrection was well beyond my abilities, even with the power of the gods at my disposal. "Wherever will I find one of those?"

"I wouldn't mind dying in your arms."

I went to scoff at him, but my throat knotted when I met his eyes. They were depthless, weighed down by the burden we both tried our best to ignore and the disquieting truth that there may not be an 'afterward.' And I knew, tethered to his gaze, pristinely blue and unending, that he meant it.


	5. Lost

Dawn was painting the sky in strokes of pale sea foam and powder blue that stretched south across the rise of the hills, smearing pigment into a morning that was otherwise devoid of color. It was cold and silent beyond what one would naturally expect of the hour, and it seemed, as I trickled back from one realm into another, that the forest's eerie enchantment must have been seeping out into the rest of the world.

The Calamity was standing at the imperceptible line of the magic, so close that his breath was crossing the boundary into it, and the mist, rising out of the earth in great whorls, was licking at him hungrily. He looked like something out of a dream: an endless, forbidding forest sprawling before him; the dull green of his tunic a lone beacon of color in the mist and the overhang that was so thick it blocked out the light; and somewhere beyond the ancient, impassable magic, the key to his own destruction was waiting, enshrined in a pedestal most of the world had forgotten.

"Have you been into these woods before?"

I blinked. His voice, pensive, unexpected, broke the spell I had fallen into somewhere on the journey between dreams and reality.

"Yes. Once. With an escort of knights."

"Don't expect them to be as docile now as they were then."

I hadn't thought them docile at all. The mist had constantly crept in on our path, threatening to steal outliers away and condemn them to wander, lost, forever, beneath the sagging, gnarled boughs of the trees. Legend said they took the faces of the lost, wearing their contorted, mindless expressions as a warning to intruders—or to torment the ones who wouldn't turn back.

But he was an ancient, prolific magic-wielder, and I was the heiress of the sealing power of the gods—there were few things in the world that could possibly get the better of us working together. I got up from the floor of dewy grass and moss and joined him beside the edge of the enchantment, dipping into the barrier with my fingertips and watching the mist lap ravenously where I touched.

"I'm sure we'll manage," I muttered.

The Calamity turned his piercing eyes on me, studying me with an expression that was puzzled and amused at once. Finally, he said, "Do you not know fear?"

"I do," I frowned, defensive. "I fear you."

"Do you?"

My gaze locked with his again, blue and orange mingling with sea green. The question was genuine, hanging between us with uncomfortable weight, his expression stony and unreadable. There was an underlying accusation in his tone that I didn't miss, and it made words lodge in my throat like stones.

"Not nearly enough," he finally decided, his mouth tugging down as he turned his attention back to the mist. He sighed. "The Woods will see to that."

And then he took a purposeful step into the mist and was swallowed whole.

I stood at the boundary for a moment, torn and harboring sudden doubt. I couldn't see him at all through the fog, though I knew he could only be a few feet away at most. The mist had descended between them like the froth of breaking waves. As always, the road behind me, unobstructed, beckoning, invited me to turn and run. But I knew that would get me nowhere. So I exhaled and stepped over the line.

The world glowed subtly on the other side and was unnaturally still, as though suspended in a moment in time and awash in cool moonlight. Even the forest I had left behind, sitting sleepily beyond the boundary, seemed shrouded in a dream from this end. He was waiting for me, standing motionless as stone in the mist between two unlit torches.

My skin prickled. It was too still, too quiet. It felt lifeless. Nothing stirred, nothing slipped under bracken, or rustled leaves, nothing breathed.

Not even the wind.

"We have to go back," I whispered.

"We can't."

Panic started to rise in me like tidewaters. I took a step backward, and then another, reaching blindly behind me for the edge I had only just crossed. But it was gone. He turned, closing his hand firmly over my wrist before I could drift too far away.

"If we get separated, it will take me hours to find you again," he growled. "Get ahold of yourself."

"The only way through these woods is by following the currents in the wind," I breathed, holding on to the last fraying bits of my patience like a lifeline. "We'll never find the path without them."

"Do you think it's coincidence that the winds that have guided your people for thousands of years are suddenly missing?" He dropped my hand, frustration evident in his dark expression. "It's the Deku Tree. He's hidden the path."

"From you?"

"And you with me," he murmured, arching a slender brow. He turned back to the moonlit wood. Mist rippled beneath the boughs, over the moss and bracken, over our skin, obscuring the night and revealing pathways that vanished again just as quickly as they'd appeared. "Stay close. If the enchantment takes hold of you, you won't be able to tell the canopy from the floor."

"I know," I frowned. I could feel the magic responsible for the phantasms and trickery permeating the air, tasting of herbs and citrus. "They're called the Lost Woods for a reason."

"That's not why," he said, moving slowly from our place at the boundary that skirted uselessly out of our reach. "It's because you'll lose yourself here."

I fell in step behind him without thinking, drawn forward as though tethered to him. The trees seemed to shift as we walked, swelling and distorting on the edge of my vision. The rot in the boles left crooked, jagged sheaths and gaping holes: the stolen faces. They watched us as we passed out of hollow eyes, looming, silently, like something alive.

"The Woods will show you truth, or your greatest fear. They're one and the same for most people." He ducked under a low hanging branch, bracing himself against the bulging trunk and tracking forward cautiously. "Confronted with that, with no way out, your mind would rather be lost."

"It must test your courage," I mused absently, thinking of the reward that lay past it, and he peered over his shoulder and met my eyes, searching for something in them beyond the moonglow and the mist.

He admitted, quietly, "Courage helps."

I followed him wordlessly after that, weaving carefully in his tracks. Once or twice, echoing out of the cover of the mist, I heard a child's laughter. But he didn't seem to hear it. Sometimes I thought he was hearing other things that I couldn't, hesitating for no apparent reason, or tilting his head towards some phantom sound that never graced my ears.

The woods grew more shapeless and illusory the farther we went. Sometimes the trees dispersed, leaving us in an empty grove where isolated oaks towered overhead, immense and immeasurable, and the sensation of loneliness breathed down my neck; sometimes they closed in, the branches splaying and knitting above until it felt harder to breathe. The woods whispered my name; they illuminated a gentle, winding path with warm sunlight that I knew would inevitably lead nowhere; they plagued me with the feeling that I had seen all those exact trees a hundred times before.

The Calamity kept his palms spread down at he led the way, scenting a path with his hands. I nearly thought of asking him to teach me the method, just so I would have something else to think of besides the illusions, but I was afraid of distracting him. In the distance, the shadow of a woman's figure glided between the silhouettes of the trees and the spangles floating in the mist.

I took a deep breath, trying to block it out. I told myself to focus on what was real, but it was becoming harder and harder to tell the difference. The woman stalked us from the shadow of an oak, her features obscured in darkness, so close she could've reached out and touched me.

It was nothing like the pilgrimage I had taken to the pedestal. Back then, surrounded by my knights, a guiding wind, and so many torches, the woods had been ominous, but the forces that made them so were always kept at bay, just outside the circle of our firelight. Now I was in the thick of it, subject to all of the temptations and duplicity the mist had to offer. I could only trust that the Calamity knew the way.

 _Trust_. My mind snagged unpleasantly on the thought. How many times had he warned me, in no uncertain terms, that I could never trust him?

Suddenly he was gone, and the woman was standing in his place.

I studied her a moment, forgetting to blink her away. She was beautiful, her long, golden tresses falling in loose curls over her shoulders. She was willowy, and elegant, and her eyes, vibrant and piercing, were a lovely shade of blue, as pure and bright as the summer sky.

"You're killing him," she whispered, her soft, familiar voice tainted with accusation and hurt.

And before I could ask her what she meant she was gone.

And I was alone.

My blood slogged as I scanned the woods for him, for someone, for anything that was genuine. But I couldn't be sure of any of it. The woods, labyrinthine, glowing, sprawled endlessly in all directions, and the mist clawed at my ankles and slithered up the trees. I set my jaw, dithering, trying to decide if it was best to stay where I was and hope he could find me, or if I should keep going forward and hope I found him.

The woods whispered my name again, a chorus of unearthly voices sounding behind me in a deafening, staggered echo, and I couldn't hold still. I moved, knowing I might be doing more harm than good, placing one foot deliberately in front of the other to keep in a straight line.

But the illusions only got worse. The ground shifted constantly, hiding raised roots and slopes until I was stumbling over them, and the whispers followed wherever I went, sometimes sounding from a great distance, trying to pull me from my path, or from just at my back, so loud I nearly jumped out of my skin. The woods seemed to go on forever. It churned by in a repetitious series of trees and knolls that all looked exactly alike, undermining my sense of direction and my confidence at once. I finally stopped when I realized I was accomplishing nothing but exhausting myself. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be calm. Muttering a brief prayer to the goddess to forgive me for my own stupidity.

When I opened my eyes again, the woman was standing with me.

She had her back turned to me, but when she spoke, I knew where I had heard her voice before. It was the voice I used in my dreams, rising out of memories that belonged to someone else. The voice that was mine and not mine.

"Don't make the same mistakes I did," she murmured, turning her face until the glow of the woods splashed against her profile. Her cheek was wet with tears. "Don't let him die."

The forest tilted and my vision swam, and I blinked, trying to regain my equilibrium. The woman was gone. The whispers started again, so close and so unexpected that I spun to face them. There was nothing. But when I turned back the woods had shifted and I froze, scanning for something that looked even slightly familiar. But it was no use; I was thoroughly disoriented.

Barely able to tell the canopy from the floor.

I closed my eyes again, breathing deep to stave off the panic.

"Courage," I reminded myself quietly. "It's not a trap. It's a test."

I opened my eyes. The moonglow had dimmed, turning the mist black and swallowing the trees. There was a presence in the dark, cold, malevolent, like a storm brooding on the edge of my consciousness. The flesh on my skin rose suddenly and I spun, looking for the source. Shrouded in the darkness, illuminated by threads of pale light, the Calamity stood with his back turned.

I stumbled forward, too relieved to question the reality of him. But when I reached out to touch him he vanished, splintering into a thousand particles and dissipating into the mist. Then I felt him, standing so close his breath skimmed the nape of my neck. I whirled, power rising up in my throat like bile, and he caught both my wrists in his hands.

His eyes came up to meet mine, and I flinched at the way they burned: one fluorescent as blue fire, the other molten as smelted ore.

"You're so breakable," he murmured.

The familiar heat of a conjuring seeped out of his hands, traveling up my wrists, over my arms, up my neck. Then he let go, and my hands snapped down at my sides so forcefully I cried out in surprise, paralyzed by his magic. My heart sputtered as he paced a slow circle, eyes trained on mine. I kept fixed on the illusion of him until he moved outside my line of vision and stopped there. His fingers traced my spine where it met my skull, and I shuddered against that familiar touch, too warm and too cool—and so gentle, as though he were stroking something made of glass.

"Such weak defenses. A clean break here would kill you almost instantly," he mused, and then trailed his fingers down my backbone, brushing along the ridges through my tunic until they came to rest on the small of my back. "Or here, if I wanted to cripple you."

My mouth went dry at the threat. I knew he wasn't real. I knew this was all in my mind. I knew as long as I stayed in control he couldn't hurt me.

But I wasn't in control. My blood pounded in my ears and my stomach twisted, and every instinct surging through me shouted at me to scream, or to run. But I couldn't move. Even though his magic couldn't be real and even though I must have been alone _I couldn't move_. He circled me again, watching with renewed interest, and something bitter coiled in my throat at the fire in his eyes. I felt it, like a cold caress or the kiss of a blade's edge on my neck: he was hunting, and I was prey.

"Slicing the skin here would bleed you out slowly," he went on, running icy fingers across my paralyzed wrist. Then he brought his hand to my throat, stroking the hollow of it. His fingertips lingered, his eyes sliding haltingly from the contact there to my eyes. "Or here, if I wanted to do it more quickly."

He vanished again with a sound like breath, atomizing and suspending for an unreal instant before melting into the dark, and a shiver coursed over my skin like a breath of lightning.

"Shall we try it?"

A blade lodged between the bones in the small of my back, and my gasp cut short before I could manage the scream that wanted to follow. It was cold cold and quick, like plunging into a frozen lake. Like falling into water so frigid every muscle in my body cramped at once. The magic fell away as he wrenched it out, and I collapsed, everything from my waist down horrifyingly numb.

I shouted where I hit the ground, panicked and vision swimming and trembling all over. He knelt beside me, watching me again, but I was beyond feeling shame. My chest heaved as I tried to draw breath, as I tried uselessly to move, as I burst into tears, as small, choked sounds broke in my throat with every gasp. I forgot the woods, the mists, the tests. I forgot about visions and illusions and the intangible gap between them and reality. I was swallowed by the sensation of being broken. By my rattling heartbeat and that instinctual fear I wish I had listened to when I had the chance. By the fire and steel of hunting eyes.

His hand closed slowly around my forearm, startling me into fighting back. I pulled, lurching away with the half of my body that would obey, but it was a futile effort. His grip was like iron. He held my wrist between us, watching my eyes, watching me drown, and dragged the gleaming star-colored blade of his dagger across the soft flesh there with deliberate slowness. I sobbed and gasped and cried, and his eyes gleamed and danced; my arm landed beside my head when he let me go, and I watched the laceration ooze and pulse an even rhythm with the beat of my pounding heart. His voice filled the woods again, filled my ears, filled my mind, thrusting me under a surge of dread as easily as he would've held me underwater.

"And now that you're broken, now that you're helpless, finishing you will hardly be difficult," he mused, letting the dagger gleam near my face, catching sparse light on its edge and drawing my eyes. "But that's the trouble, Princess. I only get to kill you once, and it's been so hard resisting until now. How am I going to make your death last?"

Something cold trailed over my lip, down my throat, down the seam of my body, but I couldn't tell if the touch was his or the touch of his blade. I watched mist and moonglow tumble over my head, felt after the prickling numbness radiating from the lower half of my body, caught up in the fuzzy disconnect where the nothingness met where my limbs should have been. I waited, lingering in the shallow breath I had taken, vision clouding. Fixating on that cool touch. Suspended in the promise of it.

Then the knife bit into me again, sinking through my heart or a lung, and the world spun. My vision went white, my heart surging louder as sight and taste and sound drained away, as I spiraled towards something dark, something that was unnervingly like death. The fear drained, too, lending me clarity that orbited a single, simple truth: that I had made a terrible mistake.

My knees hit the ground and I gasped, forcing air back into my lungs as I teetered unsteadily back to life. The forest had returned to itself, bathed in pale light and shifting mist, and the woman was kneeling with me.

"You have to save him," she insisted, before I had even had a moment to catch my breath. "You're the only one who can."

"Him?" I panted, still drinking adrenaline, still trembling as I came to grips with being alive. "The Calamity? That _monster_?"

"You know what he is!" She pressed her lips together impatiently, averting her eyes, and whispered, "How do you think he means to draw the Sword? You don't see the truth because you don't want to see it. The truth is in your mind, Zelda. It's your fault he's a monster."

The grass beneath us blanched white, dissolving into ash and spreading, expanding, touching the trees, the vines, the stones, sapping the forest colorless and reducing it to chalky dust. I got to my feet and tried to outrun it, sure it would come for me next. I didn't make it far. The forest stretched ahead of the ash and then snapped back around me, like getting shoved back in time, and the woman stalked out of the trees as I stumbled.

I sucked air, shaken, swallowing panic as color slowly leached back into the world, and met her eyes. I could see some resemblance between us now that I looked. We had a similar brow, and we shared a sweep of jawbone that my mother had, and her mother before her. Her lips were fuller than mine, and her eyes were jewel-tone blue, and her lissome build made her seem untouchable; but beyond those differences, I could see the inherent similarity the Calamity had seen. We were the same in our deepest parts, both of us an expression of the same power, born to inherit the same light and use it to imprison the same evil.

It made what she was asking of me all the more incomprehensible.

"What do you expect me to do?" I finally demanded. "How can I help what he is?"

"The answer was at Thyphlo, and if you kill him now, then he will truly be lost," she said, her voice thinning, vanishing into the air like the memory of a whisper. She was disappearing with it, disintegrating into the mist, and then she followed it completely, her voice lingering like a curse: "And you will be his murderer."

A raindrop, startling, viscous, dropped onto my cheekbone, and I flinched away, brushing it off with the back of my hand.

It smeared red across my knuckles.

I raised my eyes upwards and met his, listless, colorless, staring vacantly where there should have been so much fire. He was strung up, graying and lifeless, in a tangle of vines, swaying inverted in the air above me. One of his arms had come loose, hanging down as though he were reaching for me, and blood was dripping rhythmically off his fingers. The drops fell on my brow, my cheek, my lip.

But I couldn't move, or even look away. And the scream that welled up in me wasn't mine, and it wasn't born of disgust, or fear. It was born of agony.

Sunlight glared blindingly through him from nowhere, melting the illusion and sending the mist spiraling away, and I spun, shielding my eyes. The light carved a passageway through the fog, and standing at the other end of it, his hand outstretched and his eyes lit with a blaze of power, was the Calamity. I ran towards him in that breathless moment of clarity, gasping, forcing myself forward even as the mist tumbled back over the path like crashing waves. The fog fell between us, obscuring him, threatening to pull us apart again. But I kept running for all I was worth.

I barreled headlong into him, reflexively fisting my hands in his tunic in case the forest tried to separate us, and I didn't even care when the sound I made when I tried to swallow was pathetic. I panted as the adrenaline ran its course, staring into his throat, willing him to be real. His hands closed on my shoulders as the mist closed around us, and I finally dared to look into his eyes.

Not glowing and mismatched. Not ashen and lifeless. Just the amalgam of sapphire and amber I was used to, searching mine—probably for signs of sanity. My breath shuddered out in relief, my fingers going lax in the fabric, and I trembled in his hands.

"I don't have as much courage as I thought," I whispered.

He took a shallow breath, leaning closer, but then thought better of his reply. He said instead, softly, his voice taut, "Neither do I."

He took my hand without another word, linking his fingers firmly in mine, and turned again, leading me with new urgency through the web of enchantment.

But despite his intensity, progress was slower this time; he seemed more cautious, or perhaps less certain.

After he brought us to a stop for a third time, I asked, so quietly, "What is it?"

"It's more difficult with one hand," he murmured, but his grip on me didn't slacken, and I wasn't about to suggest that he let go.

"Teach me," I said, hoping he would allow it. Hoping it would make a difference. I was desperate for distraction and would've done anything to get out of that forest.

He passed me a disapproving glance, but then surprised me by complying.

"You can feel the threads of the magic weaved over this place. They're stronger where they're shielding the path. Give me your hand."

I offered it cautiously, and he turned, bringing his own palm to hover beneath mine. Power, invisible, tenuous, pulsed out of it, and I could feel it alight on my skin, delicate as the beat of a butterfly's wing.

"That's what you're looking for," he murmured, turning his attention back to the woods and moving in a new direction. "But this magic is old and well-crafted, and it's everywhere. The differences will be subtle."

I nodded and let my hand fall facedown, mimicking his method. I couldn't increase his acuity as he could have if he had both his hands, but I could offer a second opinion. I let him lead, experimentally feeling for the gradation between the magic cloaking the path we were on and the magic that hung elsewhere, feeling for the butterfly pulse of ancient power on my palm. It was subtle. But when we came to a juncture, the rise of power bending to the left, he looked to me for confirmation, and when I nodded he followed it without hesitating.

The forest contorted, entrapping us as long as it was able. But finally, after a thousand questioning glances and a thousand answering gestures, the Calamity raised his eyes and focused on a break in the mist, and his grip on my hand tightened.

"There," he said, moving towards it without letting me go.

The barren floor of the maze dipped and gave way to the edge of a gully, hidden by the blanket of mist. It clung to us as we stepped onto the fern-laden path, as though trying to pull us back, but thinned and vanished in the heat of the sunlight. Birdsong reached us slowly, carefully, as though trying to pry us out of a dream, and the green underbrush grew more verdant as my eyes adjusted to the light. Once he was certain the danger had passed, he dropped my hand.

The canopy above us was lush, filtering the sunlight in blinding spangles that shifted with the wind. Gradually, like the sands of the desert giving way to a bank of stone, the leaves above us dotted with blossoms until we were under nothing but blossoms. The sunlight poured brighter through the gentle film of the petals, dousing the glen in warm, pink-hued light. A breeze pulled at us, cool and refreshing and tasting of an ancient power, and rising silently, untouchably, out of the earth, a medallion of worn stone eaten by forest, its centered pedestal, and the blade plunged immovably into it rested in the grove like an old, forgotten memory.

It struck me, then: the juxtaposition of the horrors in the woods with all the courage that sword represented. It felt unmistakably divine, and for a moment I felt unworthy to even approach.

But the Calamity had no such qualms. He marched on the pedestal, showing it as much deference as a well-trodden staircase. I swallowed an angry rebuke, moving to follow. Then a resonant, booming voice filled the wood, reverberating through my ribs, and my eyes swept up the sprawl of ancient roots and the gnarled bole rising behind the pedestal as I startled, settling on the ageless, omniscient eyes of the Great Deku Tree.

"So. You survived."

The Calamity scoffed. "Don't sound so surprised."

I glared at him, mortified, but the deity was unfazed by his lack of respect.

"You have come for the Sword," the tree mulled, the smooth knots that were his eyes shifting slowly beneath awnings of dense bark. They settled on the lonely blade, passionless and filtering through the knowledge of forgotten ages. "If you mean to end the cycle, I must caution you that the task before you is an arduous one."

"But it will work?" he pressed.

"If you have the strength," he replied, dryly. Then his massive eyes settled on me. I resisted the urge to shrink behind the Calamity, as though he could possibly hide me from that penetrating gaze, as dark and aged as the heart of a mountain. Finally, he decided, "You have not told her."

"No."

A strain of silence followed, the tree waiting patiently for his disapproval to be acknowledged, and the Calamity too stubborn to budge. Eventually he realized it was foolish to challenge a tree to a game of patience and changed the subject.

"I have the strength. I have the sealing power. I only need the Sword."

"And you are wondering if it will accept you," he surmised. "As you are now, I cannot say whether you are worthy or not. But I do sense you are in a weakened state."

He frowned, but didn't contradict him. I thought of the way he had lifted the fog, of the incredible power that repelling such ancient magic must have taken, and suddenly wondered that he was still on his feet.

"We could both use some rest," I ventured, hoping to circumvent his pride. It wouldn't do for him to jeopardize our efforts on account of his ego.

He gave me an irritated sidelong glance that clearly stated he knew what I was up to. Still, it was a generous if not transparent gesture, and apparently he wasn't above accepting it.

"Fine," he decided curtly, and then turned on heel and stalked off into the grove.

I watched him go, bristling at his irreverence. He hadn't exactly been dismissed. But the sound of bending wood and creaking boughs made me turn, and the tree had shaped his features into a gentle smile.

"There is much you can forage in this forest," he said. "A full stomach will help you regain your strength. Do not concern yourself with the enchantments here. I will ensure your protection."

"Thank you," I said, allowing myself the first genuine smile in recent memory. Not having eaten since the day before, I was more eager to take him up on the offer than I cared to admit aloud. But there were things eating at me worse than hunger. I glanced carefully over my shoulder at where the Calamity had wandered; he was nearly concealed by the staggered trees, retreating further and further into the gully. "What has he not told me?"

"Perhaps you should ask him."

When I turned back, his features had reverted to slabs of bark that resembled a face, perhaps, but that were too motionless to belong to anything alive. I sighed, taking that as an indication that the conversation was over, and moved off the pedestal towards the grove beneath the Deku Tree's canopy.

Unlike the spectral woods surrounding it, the grove was beautiful, and there was life: birds and tree rodents and insects with wings that glittered like translucent jewels. But I sensed that the Calamity's presence had changed things, either driving something away that was as inherent to this place as a heartbeat or moving the Deku Tree to conceal it. I tried to push the unpleasantness of that aside, filling myself with berries and nuts and mushrooms and scattered pieces of low-hanging fruit, nourishing myself with the peace of that forest along with my food.

I explored long after my hunger had been satisfied. The air smelled of fresh growth and the sweet decay of old bracken turning brittle in the sun. But despite the serenity, the visions still loomed in the back of my mind, haunting me. And it seemed the more I tried to forget them the more they refused to be repressed. I traced the fragments of the visions and my dreams, trying to isolate the threads that wove them together. It couldn't have been coincidence that the woman I became in my dreams was the same woman who confronted me in the Lost Woods. But if there was a fuller, deeper meaning, I had yet to find it. There were just too many holes.

Then the Calamity crouched beside me and I started. His lip twitched, amused.

"You're a little jumpy."

I glared. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. But I have a few more things I should teach you."

That was unexpected. I hadn't thought the lessons would continue beyond his uncharacteristic charity the night before, but now that I'd had a taste of my own abilities beyond the throbbing, necessary magic of the goddess's power, I have to admit I was eager to delve deeper. An incarnation of evil wasn't the ideal teacher, of course, but at the moment I didn't have other options—and frankly doubted I would ever come across someone as capable for as long as I lived.

I shifted and reluctantly put my glare away. He noticed, a knowing smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth.

"Telekinesis," he sighed, thrusting his hand to the side and calling a fallen branch to it. It whipped through the air, flying straight to his palm, and then he opened his hand, sending it hurtling away, and it splintered on a tree trunk. He plucked an acorn from the underbrush and handed it to me. "Let's start small."

I pouted in spite of myself. "I think I could handle a stick."

"So do I," he said, quirking a brow. "But if you miscalculate and hit yourself in the face, this will hurt less."

I tilted my head in acquiescence, secretly pleased, and let power pool in my hand. It was already easier than it was not even two days ago.

"Magic is a channel. It connects the elements that make up the universe, and everything around you in susceptible to it. You're already physically aware of that, whether you're conscious of it or not. When you tap into that awareness, manipulating your surroundings is easy. Start by exploring that awareness."

I frowned skeptically, holding the nut out in a cynical gesture. "You want me to become aware of this acorn?"

"Too clever for step one, are we?" he scowled, and then he flicked my forehead, and I scowled back. "I don't mean with your eyes, Zelda, I mean with your perception."

I rolled the acorn in my fingers, swallowing my pride. "I don't know what that means."

"You're relying too much on what your senses tell you," he decided. "Try closing your eyes. Open your palm so you're feeling it in your hand less."

I hesitated, my scowl still in place as I searched him for signs of deceit. None of that sounded helpful. But my desire for the knowledge won out, and I pinched my eyes shut. In the dark behind my eyelids, I instinctively fell back on tactile senses and on the sounds disturbing the silence for information. I tried to move beyond them, tried to ignore what my body was telling me and bury myself in my mind, but it was like trying not to breathe.

"You're holding back," he murmured. "You want a waterfall, but you're only giving it a few drops of water."

Before I could question him his hand was on my shoulder, flooding me with a surge of power as he had the night he taught me fire. The power pulsed and throbbed, almost painful in its heat, but I resisted the urge to shrink back. It grew, feeding off my own powers, drawing from the untapped floodgates buried deep beneath the surface and filling me with white hot light. It was frightening, but it was also heady, and exhilarating, and I didn't know for the life of me why I always held back from doing this on my own.

Soon the input I had been trying to ignore before seemed unnecessary. He dropped his hand, letting me sustain the power on my own, and in the quiet of my mind and the light, I felt the breath of the wild around me. Everything, no matter how small, how brittle, seemed to glow, and in my mind's eye I could see the acorn smoldering in my palm. I touched it with my thoughts, and then felt it rise out of my palm as I guided it upwards.

A breeze moved through the glade, tousling every shuddering blade of grass, every spindly skeleton of leaf and diaphanous damselfly wing, and I tracked them as they tumbled, sensing where they landed and settled amidst the underbrush. My perception went out of me like a heartbeat, pulsating as far as the edge of the forest's enchantment. And I could feel everything in between.

"Zelda."

His voice brought me back to myself and I opened my eyes. All around us the woods were dancing, alight with seedpods and fern fronds, pebbles, forgotten twigs and broken butterfly wings and coils of shriveled leaves, all suspended in the air and catching sunlight like a thousand glittering spangles. And I realized I was holding them all.

I gasped, snuffing the power out, and they rained back to the forest floor.

"I wouldn't have stopped you," he murmured, his eyes glinting with the ghost of a smile, "but you were about to start uprooting the trees."

I stared, a little shaken. "Maybe that's enough magic for one day."

He nodded, lips pursing. Then his eyes slid away from mine, pensive, and he took a quiet, hesitant breath. "There is something else."

The tenor of his voice had changed, and I swallowed reflexively, eyes widening as it registered. I didn't know what in all the world could make him hesitate.

"I don't know what will happen to the power of the gods when I'm destroyed. The pieces might fracture, scattering across Hyrule, or they might find new bearers from this era. But there's a chance they might resonate in you." He harnessed my eyes again. They were startlingly dark. "If that happens, you must never use the wish."

I blinked. "What wish?"

"The wish," he repeated again, incredulous. "Promised by the gods when the Triforce becomes whole and falls to someone worthy, someone with a balanced heart—" he stopped, scanning my eyes for signs of recognition and finding none. He sighed. "Unbelievable," he muttered, and then recovered himself. "It doesn't matter. It might not happen. But if it does, don't use it. There's too much that could go wrong."

I nodded, still largely lost—I had never heard of such a wish, and didn't know what a Triforce was—but the finality in his voice didn't leave much room for argument, and I was slowly learning not to fight him when it came to matters concerning magic. I brought up a quandary of my own instead.

"What did the Deku Tree mean," I prompted carefully, watching him for signs, for clues, for scraps of truth, "when he said there was something you hadn't told me?"

He scoffed. "He can tell you himself once you destroy me."

"You mean after I kill you," I corrected quietly, and his eyes went to mine, indignant. I wasn't sure what had moved me to bring up something that was arguably semantic; only that, just before I had, the vision of him swaying in the forest vines had filled my mind and made my stomach twist.

"Can a curse be killed? Is it even alive in the first place?" he demanded, anger swelling suddenly in him. Then he got up before I could press the issue, turning to leave me alone in the trees, and repeated, "It doesn't matter."

I didn't follow him. I rubbed at my forearms, where it felt like the power wasn't shutting off. They itched like something was crawling under the skin.

When the sun began to go down hours later, I walked back the way I had come, and used my newfound abilities to snatch at fruit that was growing too high. It was probably not the best use of that power, but I was honestly still too frightened of how quickly it had gotten away from me to try anything else.

I found the Calamity near dusk. He spared me an acknowledging glance as I made my way towards him across the moss and fallen blossoms, but didn't engage me beyond that. A chill was starting to flood the forest floor, but he hadn't move from the log he sat on to remedy it.

"No fire?" I prodded.

"Build it yourself," he muttered. "We both know you're not helpless."

I frowned at the bitter edge in his voice but didn't argue, moving to collect suitable kindling. I sparked some fire in one hand, disconcerted with how effortless it had become. Then an idea spun a tiny web in my head and I let myself get snagged in it, using my senses to pull at brambles and twigs and branches without moving from my spot. It worked surprisingly well, coming together and catching as I fed it more warmth and more fuel. I wandered back to where he was, and let the hovering fireball of brushwood I had constructed fall unceremoniously between us.

"Not bad," he remarked dryly. He hadn't even looked at it.

I resisted the urge to scowl, settling silently beside it. We sat for a long time, not saying a word, listening to the tinder snap as the fire devoured it and the staggered chirping of the insects. But it wasn't pleasant. His disgruntled silence ate at me, thickening the air around him like a bad aura, until I could hardly stand to be near him.

"You're impossible to please," I finally growled, and when he didn't respond I carried on, for no reason other than a sudden, blind desire to provoke him. "And you're moody, and bad-tempered, and ungrateful!"

He stared at me then, his expression a strange amalgam of trouble and disbelief. "Why does any of that come as a surprise to you?"

I sighed, falling onto my back and watching the canopy flicker between the firelight and the stars. I listened to the night noise; I recognized the katydids, the crickets, and the tree frogs, but something else warbled occasionally, adding to the symphony with its unfamiliar call. It was annoying, like listening to someone sing a song in a sour key. I was tired of asking questions I didn't have the answer to.

Finally, I said, "I don't know."

He scoffed. "Go to sleep, Princess."

Visions and cold sensations welled in my mind, and then brimmed in my eyes, and I let my eyelids fall shut to keep them in.

"I don't think I can," I whispered.

"Afraid of the nightmares?" he mused, and I turned to glare at him. His eyes were dancing with firelight. "What did you see?"

"Nothing I care to share with you." I sat up again, trying to glare more effectively, but then my expression turned thoughtful in spite of my own stubborn intentions. I asked, quietly, "What did you see?"

It was a long time before he answered. Finally, he murmured, "Only the truth."

Then he left his place on the log, rounding the fire to crouch beside me. I watched the orange coils undulate in the blue circles of his eyes. In their own, untamed way, they were beautiful. I hadn't noticed before, perhaps because I had found them too frightening, or because the undercurrent of his evil was always repulsing me, coloring everything about him displeasing. But I didn't feel it then. I felt the opposite. Drawn in, pulled closer, as by curiosity or invitation, and with his face as near to mine as it was obeying that pull would have brought us tantalizingly close. So close he could've pressed his lips to mine, and tasted my fear in a new way.

"Would you like me to?"

My eyes fluttered back to his, and I realized he was offering to put me to sleep. I flushed a little at my errant train of thought, hoping it was disguised by the fire, and nodded, trying to swallow an unfamiliar warmth in my throat. At least he was asking before putting me under now. That was progress.

Too bad I was going to help him kill himself tomorrow.

I laid back down, getting as comfortable as I could on the uneven ground beside the fire. He hovered over me for a moment, his hesitation long enough that my brow puckered. He took a breath to say something, but then changed his mind, sighing, and ran his fingers over my eyes, and I fell breathlessly into the dark.

Out of that darkness, the battle eased to life again in my mind, as though I was dredging it up from the bottom of an ocean. It was chaos, churning with smoke and fire and malice, but it was what I saw in front of me that was making it so much harder to breathe.

He was screaming. The chaos was swirling, constricting, drawn towards him as my power tethered them together, funneling its incredible, amorphous mass into his mortal form. His face twisted in agony as the evil ripped into him, forced inside by my magic, and then tried to tear its way out, fighting the prison he was becoming for it. A spark ignited on his hand, and his sword flew out of his grasp, clattering as it skidded against the flagstones.

My own screams were trapped in my throat, held too tightly to slip out as I focused my power. I could barely see the merger happening through the hot tears blurring my vision and trailing down my cheeks, but the sound of his pain, echoing endlessly in my ears, more than made up for it. I knew it was working.

The monstrosity pushed back against my light and against its prison, tearing an agonized sound from him that I imagined would've accompany his body being ripped asunder. I forced the last of my strength into the sealing, and felt the transfer coalesce. He held his head in his hands, another scream erupting from him as the burden of containing it fell on him alone.

It was so much smaller, so much lighter, when it was trapped in him. Extinguishing it was no harder than taking a breath and blowing out a candle. And so, with gentle breath, I cast him out of our world.

The light snapped out, an eerie silence taking its place, and I let my head loll back, my power spent and my life quickly slipping away.

My blood was pooling beneath me, rushing out of innumerable wounds. The Guardians that were left powered down all over the battlefield, heralding an end to it all. A weak, breathless sob broke out of my throat.

" _Link…_ "

Dark started crowding my vision, claiming me. Salty tears mixed beneath my temple with blood, and as my heart thudded its last, tremulous effort to keep me alive, I felt only one thing.

Regret.


	6. Revelation

Breath shunted like fire into my lungs as I breached the surface of the memory, gasping for air. My hand flew to my chest as I sat up, trying to keep my heart from bursting out of it. I was drowning in grief that wasn't mine, tasting the bitter, metallic taste of someone else's guilt on my tongue. A scream welled and broke in my throat, and I dug my fingernails into my scalp, shaking with panicked sobs that shuddered out of me without tears.

I couldn't breathe. The raw, undiluted _gruesomeness_ of what she had done coiled behind my ribs, sitting in me like a stone. She had saved thousands of lives from an untimely, perhaps even horrific death, yes; but death came for everyone, eventually, and though it was nothing to rejoice in it was at least natural. There was nothing natural about what she had done.

Songs must have been written about that night, I realized bitterly. The minstrels probably painted her choiceless and cornered, spinning dark, romantic lyrics around their tragic parting as they made the ultimate sacrifice for the world they loved. But I knew the truth, the ugliness of it. She had had a choice. And she chose to send him into a fate so much worse than death.

She condemned the man she loved to 10,000 years of torture that no mortal was meant to endure.

His name blazed across my mind like a streak of light, and in that moment I knew him. I knew the quiet half-smile he wore when she caught him staring; I knew the way his gentleness tempered his strength; I knew the warmth of his arms around her when he had pulled her into his saddle one frigid winter day, when her hands were too cold to grip the reins, and the satisfied glint in his eye, as he guided the horse through the deep snowdrift, when she didn't fight him. I knew they weren't my memories at all. But they _felt_ like mine. And I knew him.

I scanned the woods, stumbling to my feet when he was nowhere to be found. I rallied my power, breathless, closing my eyes to feel for him. He wasn't far; his glow was strong, pulsing rhythmically with the heartbeat of the forest. I headed into the grove and found him not long afterward, lingering listlessly among the oaks.

For a moment I was speechless, overwhelmed by so many cavernous emotions, most of which I hadn't had time enough to process and which didn't truly belong to me. Watching him now, hauntingly familiar, chest going tight and aching as I came to grips with how close I had come to willingly murdering an innocent person, I was plagued by another, unanswerable question: How had I been so blind?

"Link," I choked out.

He didn't turn, or even acknowledge me, and another useless sob welled in my chest. I felt thrown into the eager, spindly clutches of madness, burning with fury and regret that weren't even mine.

I shouted, "Link!"

Finally he turned, his piercing, two-toned eyes settling begrudgingly on me. "What about him?"

I paused, absorbing his tenor. It was guarded, but mostly it was resigned.

"You knew," I breathed, the pieces snapping idly into place. "You knew I would remember."

"No, I didn't know. But I suspected." His eyes darkened, peering back into memory. "You've said that name before, in your sleep."

I shook my head, bitter and angry and miserable. "How could you do this? How could you lead me into this without telling me the truth?"

"The truth?" he scoffed. "You're a child, bearing a power you can barely restrain and that you don't understand, trying to control a fate you know nothing about—what do you know of truth?"

"I know who you are!"

He stalked dangerously forward, daring me to challenge him again. "And who am I?"

"The Hero," I hurled defiantly, standing my ground and raising my chin. "The one chosen by the Sword that Seals the Darkness. The one destined to fight the Calamity and—"

"He doesn't exist anymore," he interrupted brusquely. "He ceased to exist the moment the Calamity entered him."

"That's not true," I insisted, half-countering, half-begging. "You are the Hero. That's why you spared me. That's why you spared the Outpost. That's why you're trying to destroy yourself, why you're trying to stop the Calamity from ever rising again! You still control it!"

"Control it?" he echoed incredulously. "Is that where this sudden, misplaced esteem is coming from? You think that I contain him? That the Calamity is trapped in me?" He came even closer, his eyes burning with a fury so ancient I couldn't begin to understand it. "Well, let me disabuse you of that notion. I _am_ the Calamity, just as much as I am your precious hero. Whatever wrath I restrain is my own, and you're a fool for thinking otherwise."

The anger ebbing off him should have been a warning, but I was possessed well beyond caution. The remorse rattled inside me like a beast, clawing its way out and leaving me splayed open and bloody.

"That isn't your fault. None of it was. You shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes she made!"

"You have the gall to say she made mistakes? You, who reap the benefits of her choices? You're only alive and you're kingdom is only standing because of what she did."

"I'm not so blind that I think that makes it right. Everything about this is wrong, and I won't have any part in it! I won't help you kill yourself!"

His lip curled, baring a sliver of white tooth as he reined his anger. He turned his back on me in a deliberate retreat and paced away a few steps before he whirled, his frustration finally breaking through his collected exterior.

"This is exactly why I kept the nature of what I am from you! I knew you would let your idealistic, inflated sense of justice get in the way of your judgment. Zelda knew what had to be done, and she didn't hesitate to do it just because it was morally questionable!"

"You think this is what she _wanted_?"

"She did her duty!"

"She loved you!"

"I know that!"

Silence descended between us like a thunderhead, charged with anger and despair the world should never have forgotten. His eyes bored into mine and my nerve wilted. Of course he had known. In that moment, suspended in his penetrating gaze, I did feel like a child. I could see my own presumptuousness, the staggering inexperience that made me unfit to be his counterpart and that made me incapable of truly comprehending everything he had lost. I had never even been in love, certainly not in the way she had loved him. It had filled her, ripping her asunder even as the Calamity had tried to tear him in two.

"She did her duty, Zelda," he repeated, more controlled. "And you have to do yours."

I shook my head, bitter tears spilling out of my eyes, and folded my arms. "No."

"How are you so incredibly arrogant? You barely know your own lore, your own history, the nature of any of this, and you think you can just make things end the way you want through sheer force of will?"

"I know I'm young! But this is wrong! And I'm the only one who can begin to make amends for what happened!"

"You can make amends by doing as I say!" he bit back, raising his voice to meet mine. "The Calamity has to be destroyed, or all of this will have been for nothing!"

"There has to be another way!"

"There is no other way!" he roared, so loudly it was hardly human, and I had to reach for the goddess for the strength not to cower. "I have to be destroyed!"

"You shouldn't have to make that sacrifice!"

"She made that sacrifice as much as I did, and I won't dishonor her memory by undermining what she's done! This is what she wanted!"

I stared at him, horrified. And then whatever good sense I had left in me snapped.

"She never wanted this!" I shouted—at him, at fate, at the gods themselves. But it seemed no matter how loud I made myself or how desperately I tried to make them see, that none of them would ever understand the agony his Zelda had felt. It was burning a hole right through my middle. "She regretted it! She regretted it the moment it happened, and she died regretting it!"

He stopped, the rigid lines of his face jumping as though I'd just slapped him. The world felt unnaturally still in his ensuing silence. Holding its breath. I watched as something dark rose in him, something feral and shapeless and old, until whatever was holding it back finally broke.

Power ruptured out of him like the quivering, low note of a harp, whipping the forest with a squall that bent the trees until they threatened to snap. The old oaks groaned, too massive to bend, and the mossy ground heaved as their roots lifted beneath it. My startled cry was pulled out of my mouth by the wind, and I threw my arms over my face, shielding my eyes from debris, and reached in a panic for the goddess. She skirted away as though caught in that wind.

As his power hit its apex, bursting out of him, he flung the runoff furiously into the grove with a crack like thunder, blasting a desolate, hollow canyon as far as the brink that fell into Lake Mekar. A scar split across the ground under his feet and branched, moving away from him like dark, jagged arteries as the power filled him; as a raw, haggard gasp pulled from his throat as it overtook him with its light. The earth shook and the trees swayed, and the air tasted of suspended electricity. The brilliant amber in his eyes warred in earnest with the vibrant blue, nearly drowning it out.

This was what he had always warned me about, I realized grimly, what he had always feared. If he lost control, no amount of desire to spare me on his part would protect me from what he was capable of. But after so many painful seconds, he drew the power back, quaking with the effort of reining his own fury.

I waited with bated breath for the storm to pass, fresh tears running hot trails over the cool places where the wind had wicked the old away. The earth calmed and the wind slowly died, the canopy quivering noisily in the aftermath. He closed the distance between us as stillness settled back into the forest, panting, and his hands bit painfully into my arms. His voice was quiet, desperate and laced with warning.

"Tell me you're lying."

His clashing eyes bored into mine, piercing and unreadable, and I suddenly felt as though I were holding the last, tattered shreds of the man he used to be in my hands.

"I've seen your Zelda in visions, in dreams," I whispered. "In the Lost Woods, she begged me not to let you die. Last night, I saw her confine the Calamity inside you, and I felt—" my throat constricted, thick with the memory of her heartbreak, and I watched helplessly as his eyes recede into some dark, private past, too old and tangible to question. "I'm so sorry."

He didn't release me; it seemed, his trembling hands closed firmly on my arms, that I was the anchor keeping him from losing all sense of reality, or from splintering the world with a thought. His eyes were misted over with a haze of ageless memory, lingering and haunting like the ruined remnants of some civilization, lost to the sands of time and wiped from the annals of history, slowing eroding out of existence.

Finally, he murmured, "It doesn't matter. None of this matters. There isn't another way."

"She said there was a way to save you," I whispered, wetting dry lips. They tasted of salt. "She said the answer was at Thyphlo."

His eyes slid away as he digested the idea, flickering with the briefest semblance of recognition. He murmured, "That doesn't make sense."

I had no answer for that, waiting silently for him to work through the puzzle the woman from my dreams had left us, which I was woefully ill-equipped to solve myself. His grip on my arms slowly eased, and shivered as he took my face in his hands, wiping my tears away with his thumbs. His eyes searched mine, but I realized with a sinking feeling that he was looking for someone else in them.

"You won't just let me die in peace," he muttered bitterly. "I should've known."

He dropped his hands, turning silently towards the place the pedestal rested in the shadow of the Deku Tree, and I released a breath that I had held for too long.

My legs trembled beneath me as I followed, the adrenaline that had kept me stalwart in the face of his anger beginning to wane. I fell behind as he slipped into the grove, but the pedestal wasn't far; I saw him ascending the worn stone through the trees, the image of him approaching the sword flickering in and out of sight as I drifted between the pillars of them like something secret, something hidden by the oldest magic.

I moved quietly into the clearing behind him lined with stepping stones. The Deku Tree's face was still obscured by dense, unmoving bark, seeing all but offering nothing. If he had any sour opinions on the Calamity's blasting a ravine out of his forest, he was keeping them to himself. Sunlight was filtering through the canopy of knitted blossoms, bathing the Calamity in soft blooms of color. It was like watching another dream.

"I ask you again," he murmured, still facing the sword. "Help me do this."

"I won't," I said, my voice sounding so small in the expanse.

He turned, unexpectedly, watching me from his perch on the triangular dais. His eyes still smoldered with quiet rage, but it was less pointed.

"Why?"

"Why?" I echoed incredulously, my brow pinching. "Hyrule owes you a debt that can never be repaid, and when I say I can't abide killing you after everything you've sacrificed, you ask me why?"

"You're doing this for me?"

His voice was so level, so bland and detached, it was hardly a question. I plowed forward three steps, as though closing the distance might somehow help him see the situation clearer.

"Yes!"

"Has it occurred to you that this is what I want?"

I stared numbly, flinching away from his words like an unanticipated slap, and something tired and awful stirred behind my ribs and drank deep of the darkness in his eyes. It felt like hopelessness. It felt like surrender. He moved away from the blade slowly, toward me, as though sensing my weakness; as though drawn to it.

"I've been harboring the Calamity for 10,000 years, learning its hatred, tasting its power, letting it corrupt me and knowing I will never be free of it. It filled me with its malice, rooted itself in me with barbed spores that burned as they tore into me and that still burn. It consumed me until there was nothing left." He had closed the gap, glowering down at me with a hatred that stole the breath from my chest. I was crying again; his eyes were burning like two suns trapped in a pair of moonstones. "Haven't I done enough?"

"Please," I whispered, "don't give up. Not now. Take me to Thyphlo. Look for the answer with me. If there's a way to save you, it has to be there. And if it isn't—" I licked dry lips, searching briefly for a third option. There wasn't one. "If it isn't, I promise I'll help you with whatever ritual needs to be done."

He considered my offer briefly, searching me impassively. "Do you swear?"

I nodded adamantly, frantically latching onto the prospect of compromise like a piece of flotsam in a rush of floodwater. He frowned, and then took me by the wrist and led me up the stones to the dais and the sword. My breath caught haltingly as I stumbled behind him and he pulled me to the other side of the pedestal.

"Link—"

"We're not going anywhere without a contingency plan," he insisted in a tone that brokered no argument. "If something goes wrong, or if Thyphlo is a dead end, we use the sword. Do you understand?"

I pursed my lips, but nodded. That wasn't unreasonable. He sighed hotly and eyed the sword. It stared back at us out of two different sets of eyes. I reached for it tentatively and traced the pommel of the hilt with my fingertips. Power emanated from it, rippling gently across my skin before I ever touched it. The sensation was strange, as though I were tasting a thought or hearing a color. I tasted the boundless, sharp edge of ageless memory on my tongue, of untold stories, of futures that never were and a past shrouded in incongruous riddles. I heard the discordant hue of its endless history, of dark blood eaten over too many lifetimes, of divine fires forging its desperate beginning before the world was.

He didn't move at first, watching the sword with frustrated reluctance. He reached for it finally, testing the limits of the magic that repelled him, and growled under his breath, "This is madness."

His hand stopped short of the hilt, shuddering as it was entangled in a web of enchantment. The Sword reacted to him, glowing, and I wrapped my arms around myself without thinking, shivering as the power ebbing off it wafted over me.

"I can't get closer," he murmured, frowning. "I need your power."

I took a breath to steel my nerves. It didn't help. "What do I do?"

"Place your hands over mine," he said, reaching out with his other hand so that both were extended towards the sword as if to grasp it. "Then direct your sealing magic there. Only there."

I stared, startled. "Will that work?"

"The Calamity and this body are tied together. You can't seal one without the other. But it might recede."

"Recede? Is that even possible?"

"He didn't say anything to the contrary," he growled, his eyes flickering indignantly to the Deku Tree. "But it is just a theory."

I hesitated, my hands floating near his as I waged an internal war with uncertainty. Our hands hovered in two curved rows, encircling the hilt. It glowed between them like a star ringed in a halo of moonlight.

"Won't that hurt you?"

His reply was taut with impatience. "I don't expect that it will feel very pleasant."

"But what if I—"

"Zelda. Stop asking questions."

I reflexively fisted my hands and then opened them again, frowning. Then, carefully, I called up the sealing power. I drew it up in bucketfuls, like water out of well, letting it fill me until light shone out of my skin; then I braced myself and channeled it, keeping the power confined to the sphere my hands surrounded.

He took a quiet, full breath as the power touched him. It wasn't enough; the power lingered on his skin, not quite penetrating deep enough to make the dark in him recoil. I grimaced as I poured more power into the sealing, squirming as I felt it work, separating the two pieces of him, tangibly peeling one away and leaving the other. Flaying him alive. But it was working.

The Calamity drew back from the mortal form it inhabited, repelled, and all at once the sword let him approach.

His hands grasped the hilt and the blade shuddered, recognizing him as its master and its enemy at once. It hummed darkly as he began to pull, as though in warning; light emanated from the slot in the pedestal and I felt the essence of the sword binding itself to him.

Metal scraped against stone and my pulse fluttered. It was moving.

The Sword pulsed between his hands, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. His eyes were shut, the muscles of his jaw clenching as it tested him. The blade sang against the stone again as it slid further out of the pedestal, and power ebbed from it like a burst of wind. The vibrations intensified, rattling the pebbles on the dais and jarring my bones. The sound of it seemed to fold on itself, expanding and imploding at once. It resonated until my lips and my fingers tingled and I thought the trunks of the trees might splinter, and then it stopped.

The blade rang out as he unsheathed it from the rock, a clear sound that pierced the air and commanded reverence. Then it clattered against the stone as he dropped it, and he retreated a few steps, falling haphazardly to one knee. I snapped the channel of my power closed, taking a reflexive step forward to steady him, but he held his hand up to deflect my approach. His palm was scorched red, blistered as though he had been holding the hot end of a branding iron.

"Just give me a moment," he said, panting.

I waited obediently, my expression drawn. The sword laid magnificently at my feet; its length and edges were even more impressive than I could have imagined, crafted so masterfully I knew it could have no equal in all the world. We looked like a scene out of a past that never was: he kneeling before me, his sword spread at my feet like an offering, and I waiting in silence, bathed in sunlight. A knight swearing fealty to his queen.

I stepped unceremoniously over the sword, sitting down on the edge of the dais near him. He watched me with his piercing eyes, ever a war between sunset and twilight, still trying to catch his breath.

Exhaustion washed over me like a wave. It was done, and it was just beginning.

I turned my face up into the sunlight and closed my eyes. I drew breath, softly, and said, "I think I'm going to need more than a moment."

He rolled off his knee, pressing his back against one of the stones planted on one of the platform's three angles. I stole a glance at him; he was resting in earnest, his head dipped back against the rock.

We stayed like that a long time. The world seemed to suspend. My mind was turbulent and swarming as I tried to absorb the whirlwind of our argument and the bewildering new undertaking that followed; whatever was going on in his was a mystery to me, as always. The gods only knew what had convinced him to consider my proposal. But I was grateful. I couldn't bear the thought of abetting his suicide now, even if it meant destroying the Calamity along with him.

It would just be too painful.

Finally, he murmured, "The sword needs a scabbard."

"The King had one made for you, before," I whispered, watching the ghost of someone else's memory in my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut and let my forehead drop against my hand as I willed it away. I raked my fingers through my hair as it faded, breathless. "That's going to take some getting used to."

He sighed. It was a tired sound. "This is not a good idea."

I winced at the misgiving in his voice, opting not to acknowledge the remark. But he was insistent, moving closer until any attempt to ignore him would be blatant.

"Zelda."

I could feel his eyes boring a hole in my temple, but I closed my eyes rather than look at him. "Please don't make me go through that," I whispered bitterly. "Not again."

"In the end, I may not have a choice."

"I know."

I looked at him, finally, and his eyes searched mine carefully.

"Zelda, _you_ may not have a choice."

I shook my head. "It won't come to that."

"It might," he insisted. "I need to know that you'll be able to end this if you have to."

"It won't come to that," I repeated stubbornly, a wound cut in me 10,000 years ago suddenly too fresh to contemplate reopening. "You're the Hero. The Sword chose you. The gods chose you. You're too strong to lose yourself to this—"

" _Stop_ romanticizing me!" he yelled, so suddenly I started. He closed his eyes and took a frustrated breath, fisting one hand and loosing it as he checked his anger. "Just stop it. I am what I am. I've accepted it. It's time you accepted it, too."

I turned away, unable to conjure an answer that would satisfy either of us, and he sighed again. When he stood and left me, I didn't move to follow. I waited, alone except for the sword that lay, drawn and discarded, over the pedestal behind me. Once, I glanced imploringly at the Deku Tree, but the face never reemerged.

In that loneliness, I became acutely aware of the way time slipped through my fingers: immeasurable moments, trickling away irretrievably out of a precious limited supply, and always feeling too long or too fleeting. I tried to fathom how many moments made up an era, how it might feel to live for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand—or how it might feel to be burning alive for that long. From some shadowy, untapped recess in my mind, words echoed like another memory, and I flinched away from the simple truth of them: the flow of time is always cruel.

He returned some time later with a wooden scabbard, too smooth and precise to have been fashioned using anything but magic, and a matching baldric of fused vines. He handed it to me wordlessly, and I slid the blade into the sheath with some effort. The sword was heavier than it looked, and when I went to hand it back to him I had to hold the baldric with two hands. He slung it easily over his back, and my breath stole away again at the familiarity of him. Wearing the sword entrusted to him by the gods, he was the image of the Hero I had known once, or perhaps many times.

If he harbored any sentiment toward the reunion at all, he hid it well. He gave me one last scowl before he turned down the south facing path that led back into the Lost Woods, and I followed.

At the edge of the enchantment, a mouth in the fog marked the route back, and I cast a grateful glance back at the colossal tree that still slept, ever watchful, above the grove. I wondered if he had known how the threads of our fates were intertwined, if he had known the strange, inexplicable way the truth would manifest itself. I wondered, hesitantly, what he knew of what was yet to come. I wondered, as we stepped over the line onto the path he had opened for us, why he kept silent.

The return journey through the woods was uneventful. The mist lapped at our feet, but never crossed our path, and in the absence of the harrowing visions that had plagued me the first time I was able to appreciate the forest's fleeting, ethereal beauty. The mist and the moonglow, and the grey spangles that knotted whimsically in them, shifted in breathy whorls over the ancient trees; I sparked a small fire above my palm and watched the wind blow embers from the flame, and they danced lazily down the path like a smattering of fireflies.

The figure who was both the Calamity and the Hero led the way silently, the sword slung over his back flickering in the soft light where the hilt peeked out of the makeshift scabbard. There was so much I wanted to say, but words seemed clumsy, and every time I took a breath to try anyway my tongue went numb in my mouth. A hollow maw in one of the bulbous trees cackled at me as it emerged from the mist, and I sighed.

"Link," I managed, finally. He stopped, turning slowly and waiting for me to catch up. I was wringing my hands absently, reaching for words that flitted out of my grasp like sparrows. "Thank you," I said at length, searching his impervious gaze, "for doing this for me."

His eyes narrowed, finally betraying an emotion, though it was hard to say exactly what it was. Disgust, maybe. "I'm not doing this for you."

"I didn't mean—" I breathed awkwardly, and all at once the sparrows were airborne again.

The ensuing silence was uneasy. He was eyeing me expectantly, and I was trying not to shrink away from it. But I didn't know if it was the Calamity or the Hero I had condemned whose gaze I was having so much trouble meeting.

"I know that. I meant that I know that what I'm asking of you is not a little thing. I know it will be difficult."

"Impossible, even," he murmured darkly. There was accusation in his eyes, but he turned them away before they could do too much damage. "But I don't hold you responsible for that," he said tersely, like he was reminding himself. "Like I said, I'm not doing this for you."

I nodded, absorbing his brooding silence, and then started walking again, abandoning my pathetic attempts to express myself, and he fell in step with me. I moved alongside him as we went instead of trailing behind; if I was going to ask him to keep fighting the monster within instead of helping him end it like he wanted, the least I could do was fight the instinct to keep my distance in return. At least then he wouldn't be alone.

He'd been fighting alone for so long.

We came to a wall in the mist, rising out of the earth like a curtain, and he frowned at it.

"I know what you're trying to do. It's noble of you. But it's stupid."

I suppressed the retorts that bubbled to my lips with relative ease. My desire to ensure his cooperation was stronger than my pride, for now.

"Are you recanting?"

"No."

I nodded, steeling myself with a breath. "Good."

I approached the fluctuating, silvery wall, feeling my way forward blindly with an outstretched hand as I stepped into it. It was enchanted, numbing my senses and blocking my perception, but there was no deception or illusion. It was simply a barrier. Then my fingertips felt the cool breeze of Hyrule, alighting against my skin like water, and I moved eagerly towards the familiarity of it.

As my hand emerged from the mist on the other side, warm fingers closed around my wrist, pulling me out of one forest and into another. Colors and textures blurred across my vision: feathers as azure as the Tabantha sky; a flare of hair, orange as the Gerudo sun; burled muscle, flinty as Eldin crags; shimmering scales, scintillating as brightly as a moonrise over an endless swathe of water.

And then the Calamity stepped across the boundary of the mist behind me, and the deadly edge of a scimitar sliced across the artery at his throat before I could scream, spraying a red film into the late morning light like spattered dew caught on a spider's web.


	7. Mind Games

The stroke brought him to his knees.

For an instant there was silence, fleeting and soft like the ghost of an exhale. And then it passed, and the world broke open.

Power hemorrhaged out of him like a storm. The ground buckled beneath him and trees caught in the tremor split down their middle. The stone flanking the narrow passage into the woods cracked and shifted, and the air thinned, tasting of hot metal and of a mindless, ancient rage. A thunderhead formed out of the malice with a terrible, earsplitting sound that made our blood slog. Somehow, I knew where it would end: the taste on my tongue, the burn of the noxious vapor on my skin, the familiar, primal dread that coiled in the pit of my stomach—it was all just like the battlefield from my dreams.

Link was in the thick of it, writhing, his head in his hands and his fiery eyes wild. I had seen that look on his face before, indelibly preserved in undying, borrowed memory—the look of a man who was losing himself. A glaring streak of blood oozed across his neck, betraying where the wound, now mended, had been. A stifled, grating roar was pulling out of his throat, too loud to be his—too loud to be human—and the amber threads in his eyes were burning so brightly they were consuming them.

It was the monster in him, surging inexorably to life. And a monster in me was rising to meet it.

Light, alien, irresistible, flooded me from someplace untapped, someplace old and forgotten, sweeping me downstream in its current and filling me with a quiet rage so primal and furious that it matched his. It urged me forward and I listened, ignoring the startled cries from the others as I stepped unflinchingly into the storm that threatened to tear the world apart.

His eyes met mine as I moved through squall and malice, drawing closer until I loomed over him, the goddess in me burning like a vengeful star. They were desperate beneath the wrath—begging me to fulfill the promise I had refused to make.

I could see myself in his eyes. I was an ember, luminous, molten and untouchable, glowing so brilliantly my light might have rivaled the gods themselves. But it was hardly pure. It wasn't the holy light I had imagined. It was furious. It was an inversion of his darkness. It was an instrument of war. I stared through my reflection and into him. In my mind's eye I could see the two entities inhabiting the same space before me, pulling desperately at each other: one trying to hold on, and one furiously trying to break loose. I could see the residue of the magic that bound them together, pulsing with its own vibrant radiance. I could see the pounding heart of the man caught in the center of it, trapped between two warring powers that no mortal could hope to contain.

I took his face in my hands—a goddess, condescending to soothe her chosen hero.

And the world became light, engulfing and viscous, flooding the crevices of my consciousness like a flow of honey and swallowing it whole.

What was left was immutable and static, cradling me in warmth as it blotted out memory of anything else. The light blurred and rippled, thrummed with a heartbeat so familiar it ached. Then it parted, color and memory seeping through it and painting a dark, fire-spattered room in my mind from the ruins of a castle that had crumbled to time long ago.

Stonework and shadow shaped around me in a whisper, melting slowly into something tangible until I was surrounded by sensation. Then it closed in, dispelling thought, dispelling doubt, until it was all I knew.

The flickering light of the flames in the hearth.

The warmth of his breath.

The heat of his hands, burning through the soft fabric of my dress as he drew me closer.

He kissed me, desperate and miserable and so careful all at once, and I was dizzy with the feel of him. He whispered my name, brazenly, fervently, and I shivered at the longing in it.

He had never touched me before, not like this. But I had no intentions of telling him to stop. Even if it was indulgent, and impossible, and totally, indefensibly, scandalously inappropriate.

He dropped his forehead against mine, breathing, and took my hands rigidly.

"Forgive me," he said. "That was—"

I covered his mouth with curled fingers, silencing whatever might have followed. Given his station and his duty to me, and the massive impropriety of what he had just done, it couldn't have been anything good. I met his eyes, half-lit by the fire and so beautifully blue. They reminded me of a cold autumn sky, so rich and so unalterably, heartrendingly transient that it hurt to look at it. It wasn't the first time that thought had crossed my mind.

But I had rather gotten used to that dull ache. Even craved it. He held my gaze, letting me burn in it, waiting for judgment. All sense was leaving me, and I couldn't be bothered to care. I only knew, relinquishing to it, to him, that I couldn't fathom how I had lived without it for so long.

I laced my fingers behind his jaw, squeezing my eyes shut as though I could block out the impossibility of what we were doing, and pressed my lips to his again with a sigh. He overcame his surprise in the span of a heartbeat, pulling me flush against him and threading his fingers in my hair. My heart leaped into my throat as I reveled in the resolution of it, of his strong arms drawing me closer and his gentle touch coaxing more out of me, of his sudden boldness, and the way his every thirsty, languid stroke, fueled by desire that had been pent up and stoked for far too long, whispered and breathed things neither of us had ever been at liberty to say.

It was nourishment and the sweetest deprivation at once, filling me with a warmth that could banish any darkness but leaving me wanting so much more. It made every nerve in my body sing.

Then he stopped, pulling away slowly, and my breath went with him. His eyes searched mine, flitting uncertainly between them, and a crease formed in his brow.

He murmured, "This isn't real."

I blinked, falling suddenly, unexpectedly, horrifyingly, into myself.

I couldn't find my voice, or even move, struck dumb and paralyzed in the realization that this memory was different from the others—that it was being shared.

His expression changed as I transformed, as the illusion of our waking dream began to bleed, and his eyes burned.

"What are you doing here?" he seethed.

"I don't—I don't know—"

"Is this some kind of a joke to you?" he demanded, his fingers biting painfully into my arms where he held me. "You think just because you have her memories that they're yours to do with as you please?"

"No!" I blurted, panic rising chokingly into my throat. "I didn't mean to do this—"

"Well undo it!" he shouted, shoving me away and sending me stumbling into the mantle.

"I don't know how!" I yelled back pitifully, mortified tears spilling out of my eyes and streaming down my face. "It was an accident!"

He paced away from me once, trying to calm himself, but he wasn't any less livid for it when he turned around again. I tried, hopelessly, desperately, to free us both, trying to picture anything that was real—the woods, the malice and the storm that had risen out of him, the fury that had overtaken me—but nothing made the illusion unravel.

"This is how you operate when you don't get your way, then?" he sneered. "Prick the Calamity, see if he bleeds?"

I whispered, swallowing another bitter rush of tears, "I told you it was an accident."

"Magic doesn't just materialize out of nothing," he spat, stalking closer again. "What did you want to know? If it would hurt me to relive this? If I could even tell the difference between you?"

I winced away from his accusations, still breathless and my lips still burning from the heat of his kiss. "No!"

"Then what?" he demanded, taking me by the arms again. "Do you want me to admit that you remind me of her? That I'm in agony every time I look at you? Is that it?"

"I don't want anything!" I shouted miserably, struggling uselessly in his grip. "Let me go!"

"Would it please you to know that I am?" he asked more quietly, and I stilled, wide-eyed. He let his hands drop, finally, and said, his lip curling, "Every time."

The breath stole out of my chest as he left me there, crossing to the window; the world outside was a vague, piecemeal reconstruction of the castle grounds from too many eras, part memory and part magic. I held myself where I stood beside the fire, exhausted and trembling.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice quivering, because there was nothing else to say.

"You couldn't have just done as I asked," he growled, staring into the glistening miasma and mismatched spires. "You couldn't have just stabbed me through the heart and spared us both—" he turned, gesturing futilely, "this."

I let him blame me, too drained to put up a fight and knowing he was too angry to win against besides. The lull that followed was humid; I looked numbly down at my dress, the way the dark material hugged my torso and flared elegantly just below my hips. I must have seemed such an impostor in it. He leaned resignedly, bitterly, against the wall and crossed his arms. Firelight reflected off his eyes in the dark like knife edges, piercing and glinting and stone cold.

"Exactly how long are you planning on keeping us trapped here?"

I turned to stare into the flames so I wouldn't have to look at him. "I told you I don't know how to undo it."

"Well," he said, scathingly, "it's very good."

I frowned, fixating on the fire. The warmth, the illusion of it, was so real. I reached towards it slowly, testing the limits of it, letting my fingers drift closer to the heat until they stung, until they burned. I snapped my hand back with a hiss when tears sprung into my eyes, examining my reddened fingertips.

"How did you know?" I whispered hollowly, still at a loss. "This world always seemed so real. I never once thought to question it. But you knew."

"Because these aren't just her memories. They're mine," he murmured, his footsteps drawing closer until he ghosted, blurry, dappled in light and shadow, into my peripheral vision. He took my hand in his gingerly, turning it over, examining it distantly as he set about healing the damage. "And I'm not the same. I didn't have this hatred in me back then. No amount of illusion could disguise that."

I kept my eyes glued to my palm, watching the blisters recede to reveal healthy, milky skin beneath. He stared, too, fixated on my hand, or perhaps on the image of his hand cradling mine.

"But it is good," he said quietly, finally. "I haven't felt this human since…"

He trailed off, dropping his hand and staring into the fire. I looked at him finally, examining his eyes in the firelight. It was barely perceptible, masked in illusion, but they weren't the crystalline, pristine blue I remembered. His pupils were ringed in the faintest halo of amber—a sunset submerged in ice.

"Maybe it was the goddess," I said quietly, and he met my eyes. "Maybe she wanted you to remember."

He frowned. "It's just another prison."

My stomach twisted. How could he see it as anything else? None of it was real. It was just another painful reminder of everything he had lost. Suspended in his gaze, voiceless, pliant, I thought I could see through his calloused exterior to something older, something familiar. Something burdened. My own exhale passed over my lips, feathery and soft, and I unconsciously drifted closer, to touch him, or to whisper in someone else's voice...

Then he raised his hand toward the mantel and summoned a shock of power, tearing stone and mortar apart and putting out the fire with the force of it, and then turned and did the same to the window, blasting the wall apart and pulling in a backdraft of miasma and debris. I threw my arms over my face with a cry, battered by shrapnel and a wind spurred by rupturing magic, and fleetingly tasted blood. I shouted at him from under the crook of my elbow, as furious as I was frightened.

"What are you doing?!"

"Looking for a way out," he growled, raising his voice over the squall of the collapsing illusion.

Then he turned his palm facedown, and before I could stop him he was blasting away the floor at our feet. I screamed, plummeting through illusion and fire and light out of one harrowing reality and into another.

For the briefest moment I was suspended in a void between the two, a nothingness bridging worlds and minds, as our telepathic link severed. It drained out of me like water out of a pot, whisking air and warmth with it until I felt hollow. Alone. And in the quiet, soft as a wind or a breath, I thought I heard him say my name.

And then I snapped back into myself like a crack of thunder.

The Calamity roared, sucked into its host as by a powerful tide, and as soon as it was sealed in him again I clapped the well of my power closed. The woods trembled in the aftermath, and then swallowed the last, resonant echoes of growling power.

I met his eyes in the expanding stillness, panting, afraid of a power too vast to gauge and so furious it had swept me away. _My_ power. But there was nothing but hatred burning in them. I didn't know why I had expected anything else.

He was catching his breath, too, as he glowered. I wanted to shrink out from under the accusation in his molten stare, but I was frozen, suspended in his judgment. Then his eyes slid beyond me, and the hate burned brighter.

"You," he growled, hastening to his feet, and Urbosa, standing amidst the other Champions, still dumbstruck and bewildered, had the wherewithal to raise her sword as they took a collective, haphazard step back. "Do you realize what you could have done?!"

"Link, stop," I ordered, putting a restraining hand over his collarbone and feeling for the reassuring edge of my power. "They didn't know!"

He quaked under my hand, but his rage showed no signs of progressing beyond that, tempered by a tighter grip on his self-control—or perhaps by exhaustion. My own strength was beginning to buckle as the adrenaline coursing through me waned.

"Princess," Revali called testily, flint-sharp gaze still fixed on the Calamity and muscles sprung taut to react. "Would you care to explain what in Hylia's name is going on?"

Mipha angled her spear cautiously, and Link's hand flexed. The situation was teetering dangerously close to a violent precipice, and I didn't know how to resolve it. Not alone. I put myself squarely in his way, imploring him for all I was worth.

I whispered, "Please don't do this. Don't make me fight both of you."

"Zelda," Urbosa urged me. "What did we not know?"

Link clenched his fists and his jaw, making the muscles at his temple bulge. Then he met my eyes grudgingly, and his wrath slowly began to cool. I sighed softly, grateful and relieved, and then turned to face the others.

I said, letting my shoulders sag at the simplicity of it, "Who he is."

And then, the moment my back was turned, Link's hand brushed the base of my skull, and all I managed was a gasp before I was collapsing under the weight of an artificial darkness.

I drifted back towards consciousness later as the seconds began unwinding again, sensation filtering slowly through the fog of his magic. The heat of the sun beating down on me; the caress of a warm wind; and then, like a shocking splash of reality, ice, holding me too close and carrying me over a steady stride.

My heart sputtered and my eyes flew open as I tried to get my bearings. I thrashed ineffectively in his arms, instinctively diving away from the cold, or from the evil, or both; his profile was ringed in harsh sunlight, shielding his eyes in shadow when I tried to find them.

"Put me down!" I shrieked, breathless, and when he complied I stumbled backward, and then to the ground as my legs gave out. I panted as my exhaustion registered, bewildered, trembling, "How many times have we jumped?"

He crouched beside me, his eyes finally catching light. "A few."

I sighed, exasperated and dreading the recovery, and quickly scanned our surroundings. There was nothing but grassy hillside, a smattering of trees, and the sound of water lapping at a sunken shore. I swallowed salt and adrenaline. "Where are we? Where are the others?"

He pointed over the ridge, and I followed the gesture over my shoulder. The mushrooming silhouette of the Thyphlo Ruins loomed ponderously on the horizon, dark and impermeable, like some sort of bad omen. I scowled at it. By the look of things, we were nearing the end of the hills that skirted Lake Mekar and dipped into the Badlands.

"I'm sure your friends are in pursuit by now. But they'll be hard pressed to catch us before we reach it."

I glared at him, soured. "I asked for your _help_."

"And I'd say I delivered," he frowned, and when I didn't move to thank him his eyes narrowed incredulously. "Don't tell me you actually thought I would let you bring them with us."

"They're sworn to me," I said tersely, but he scoffed before I could present an argument.

"The last thing we need is more variables. This whole endeavor has become complicated enough as it is."

"They would've helped us—"

"They would've been a _liability_ ," he snapped, "or was what happened this morning not evidence enough?"

I swallowed again, unwilling to provoke him on that front. It was exactly what he had feared would happen, and I knew how close we had all come to inadvertently unleashing something horrible on the world.

"Am I back to being your prisoner, then?" I said bitterly, and he tilted his head slowly, searching my eyes.

"What makes you think you ever weren't?"

My brow puckered at the unexpected truth of it, and I couldn't help the hurt in the question that bubbled to my lips. "Why are you doing this?"

"You asked me to."

In his usual, twisted, corrupted way, he wasn't wrong. I had asked him to take me to Thyphlo. I had asked him not to make me fight all of them at once. And now here we were—half way to our destination, and alone.

"You know this isn't what I meant. When I realized—I thought—" I cut off, pressing fingers frustratedly to my temple, and tried again. "When I said I wanted you to come with me to Thyphlo—"

"Disappointed?" he interrupted acidly. "Having second thoughts?"

My eyes swept to his, depthless and unwavering. "Yes, I am disappointed."

"You have another option," he said levelly, and his cold indifference made words catch in my throat. As angry as I was, as betrayed as I felt, my resolve to save him hadn't faltered.

"No," I whispered. "I won't do that."

"Well then," he said, opening his hands, and I turned my face away bitterly as he stood.

He moved to the edge of the hill, scouting our route. My hands fisted in the grass. Of course he had tricked me again. It had been naive to think that uncovering the truth he was so careful to hide would have suddenly changed the nature of our relationship, or the nature of who he was. But I had wished it. And the disillusionment stung.

"I could resist you," I challenged. "Buy the others some time."

He regarded me quietly a moment, considering. "Do you really want to fight me?"

"No, not really," I breathed tiredly. "But I'm not about to be cowed into bowing to your every whim."

"Then you should take the Sword now," he said, and cut me off with a sharp look when I made to argue. Dark power was building threateningly in him like a foul wind, full of evil and intent, and his point was made. "I won't give you a choice."

My teeth met with an audible click. As much as I wanted to call his bluff, I wouldn't put it past him to force my hand if I decided to be difficult. His power cooled when I didn't have an immediate response; I was out of ideas, short of throwing a tantrum.

I sighed. "So where does that leave us?"

"With you doing as I say."

I pursed my lips, disgruntled, while I thought. I wasn't overly fond of being manipulated, spellbound, and dragooned into submission whenever he liked. But as he had pointed out, I did have another choice. It had always been his intention to die by the Sword, and it was a concession on his part that we were undertaking this journey at all. Not that that excused his behavior; but I always had the option to end it, if I wished.

He seemed to sense that I had lost the will to argue, something pulling out of his voice, too, making him sound tired.

"Can you walk?"

"I think so," I murmured, accepting his hand gingerly as I hefted myself off the ground. My legs shook, but they were usable. We started slowly across the slope, headed north, and I frowned at the back of his head. "I'll have you know I don't approve of this."

He spared me an irritated glance. "Of what?"

"Of you kidnapping me again; putting a spell on me; carting me unconscious across Hyrule like a piece of luggage," I recited. "Goddesses know what you've done to the others."

He scoffed. "They're fine."

"All I'm saying is, we could do with some boundaries."

" _Boundaries_?" he demanded, spinning to meet my eyes, and his voice was so caustic I flinched. "After what you did, you want to lecture me about boundaries?"

Heat rose condemningly into my cheeks. "I said I was sorry!"

"Because you were found out?" he glowered, closing the distance between them. "Or because you didn't get the reaction you wanted?"

"I told you it was an accident! What could I possibly have wanted from you?"

"I imagine a girl as insecure and inadequate as you are stands to gain quite a lot by pretending to be someone who's everything she isn't."

I winced, breathless, silenced, reeling in the face of his hate, and all at once much more was pouring out of me than even he could have accrued in our short time together.

"You think I wanted any of this?" I demanded, voice cracking as it vaulted. "To be bound to it? To be destined? I'm sorry if my best isn't good enough, but this is all the gods have given you, so stop comparing me to her!"

"That's going to be difficult if you keep _burrowing_ inside my head and impersonating her!"

"If anyone is to blame for that, it's you!"

He took a dangerous step closer. " _Me_?"

"Yes, you! You kept me in the dark, leaving me reliant on these visions for the truth. I trust them more than I trust you! None of this would have happened if you had just been honest with me in the first place!"

"None of this would have happened if you had just done as I had asked!"

"I'm trying to save your life!"

He whirled with a roar, splitting the ground open at our feet, and the water below us sloshed and spewed where the fissure zigzagged beneath the lake and up the wall of the island that housed the Lost Woods. When he turned on me again, his eyes were feral, hardly seeing through the wrath, and fear dropped like a shard of ice into my stomach.

"My life was forfeit the moment the Calamity was bound in me," he yelled, and another rupture spilled jaggedly down the hillside, spraying dirt as the ground heaved. "Do you really think I thought I might survive?"

Another geyser erupted beside him as he stalked closer, spewing dirt and stone.

"That I didn't know the moment it happened that this would be the death of me?"

And another.

"That I couldn't _feel_ it?"

The fissure at my feet split again, branching, and I stumbled back breathlessly. "Stop it!"

He grabbed me by the arms, holding me too tightly, and the blistering cold of his touch permeated the fabric of my sleeves. "Farore, Zelda, why won't you just let me die?!"

I trembled, heart and breath seizing, certain he hadn't meant those words for me. His eyes had been wild and unseeing, staring viscerally into a past I had only glimpsed.

He stared, wide-eyed, hands shaking on my arms, as he stepped into that realization with me. His fingers kneaded at my skin as he reeled in the wake of it; then he let me go, swallowing fury, and rasped, "This was a mistake."

"No," I whispered, vacant, helpless, watching him spiral out of my influence into some dark place I couldn't follow.

"Yes. I never should have agreed to it." His expression twisted once, equal parts frustration and regret and hate, too conflicted and too _human_ to be the face of a demon, and my heart lodged in my throat. "You saw what I'm capable of!"

"Your guard was down," I tried to reason, but he silenced me with a condemning look.

"As long as I breathe, Hyrule is just one bad decision away from being thrown into chaos. You know the kind of devastation I would cause. I can't just go running off with you on some fool's errand!"

"You promised," I said, voice wavering, but I knew he wouldn't be held to it.

"End this," he insisted, ribboned eyes boring into mine. "Put the Master Sword through my heart and keep us bound until he dies with me."

I pinched my eyes shut, trying to steel myself against his demands. "Don't ask that of me. Not yet. If we go to Thyphlo Ruins—"

"Zelda, there's nothing there!" he shouted, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. "If there was any other way, don't you think I would know about it?"

Suddenly, confronted with his ire and his hopelessness, I knew why he had agreed to come with me; suddenly, I knew what I had to say to keep him with me, to keep him alive; suddenly, I knew how much it would hurt him.

I opened my eyes and whispered, "It's what she wanted."

I watched a new wave of fury course through him and irresolution spill consumingly into its wake. He was rigid, the muscles in his jaw spasming as he gritted his way through a conflict I could only guess at. Something shone in his eyes, something shackled, and for a moment I felt he was as much a prisoner to me as I was to him.

"Then let's be done with this," he growled, and taking me by the wrist he started again towards the foothills of Mount Drena.

The journey was arduous. Despite the fact that he was practically dragging me as we went, I knew we weren't making good time. Between the energy I expended containing him and the toll of the teleporting, I was physically and magically exhausted, and I knew he must have tempered his pace for me. But his kindness ended there. He spoke infrequently and looked at me even less. The one time I asked him to stop of my own accord he let me go so suddenly that I stumbled to my knees in the grass. But I didn't confront him again. His anger was brimming over, and his silence, while charged, was probably better than the alternative.

Intentionally or not, I had crossed a line today, and there was no stepping back behind it.

We finally reached the edge of the Thyphlo Ruins near sunset. Its dark, still mass blotted out the sun behind it, eating whatever light it could find. The mist blooming out of it rendered all but the fringes of the island black and shapeless. Stepping into its shadow, watching the murky water moating its edge bubble putridly, I felt an unexpected loss I had no name for.

I wondered for the first time, staring into its darkened heart and shrinking under its massive bulk, what had happened here that could warrant such darkness.

Then my name carried on the wind, and I spun.

Atop the hill, bathed in the last of the sunset and looking a little worse for wear, were my Champions. My heart swelled at the sight of them—in one piece, and as steadfastly, fiercely loyal as ever.

Then Link closed his hand tight over my wrist and pulled me inside, and we disappeared into the mist.


	8. The Curse

We stepped over the boundary into a realm darker than night, choked by a curse that had been festering on the outskirts of Hyrule, devouring light, for as long as anyone could remember. I stared into oblivion, my brain waiting for input—a shape, a sliver of shadow, a brush of wind—some suggestion of form or existence beyond the silent, hungry nothing sprawling away from us in all directions. The static, coppery taste of old magic danced on my tongue, mingling with stale air and stillwater, and I got the distinct impression the curse meant to devour me next. For once, I was glad for the Calamity's unforgiving grip on my wrist.

The darkness was so thick I could hardly tell if my eyes were open or closed, but even without sight to guide me I could tell Link had gone alarmingly still. He scarcely seemed to breathe. I drifted closer, bound to his silence, clinging onto the promise of his presence like a lifeline in the oblivion.

He summoned a flare, so sudden and brilliant that I flinched away from its light, illuminating his outstretched hand and black mist pooling in it. The way it bobbed and undulated on itself was strange looking, but besides its inherent darkness it seemed harmless to me. But whatever he saw in it was blotting out everything else. I waited so long for him to explain that I began to wonder if he even remembered I was there. And the longer he watched, the more rigid he became, until his eyes were trained so intensely on it that it made my mouth go dry.

Finally, he murmured, "This can't be."

I took a wary step closer, for all my inexperience still wise enough to know that I should fear anything that surprised him.

"What is it?"

He closed his hand slowly, smothering the darkness in his fist. He didn't answer, parsing questions far less benign in his mind. Drawing conclusions that could prove far more deadly. The light he had summoned hung discordantly in the void, its spasming diamond-shapes fluttering and convulsing like a ball of fairylight with too many wings, all bent and broken and forced to life. It spattered bone-white moonglow and shadows over the rigid line of his jaw, over the rise of bone beneath his eye and the muscles sprung taut along his neck.

When his voice finally gnawed at the silence again, his back was still turned. The words were quiet, and venomous, and so certain it made my blood run cold.

"You knew."

I blinked into the endless dark and the harsh pinprick of light, equal parts confused and terrified by the unmistakable threat in his voice. He turned, his grip on my wrist closing and the filament in his eyes smoldering dangerously. I took a breath, steeling myself to address an anger I didn't understand without upsetting the delicate balancing act that kept him from destroying us both, and the rest of the world with us.

I said slowly, carefully, "I don't understand."

His mouth turned down, a sliver of tooth appearing between shadows as his patience began to fracture. Then the light extinguished, darkness twisting and bending around us nauseatingly as he dragged us into another jump, pulling me deeper into the curse. He wrenched me forward, cry trapped in my throat, when we emerged, twisting my arm behind my back and pinning me against him with it.

"You knew I would never follow you as far as you needed me to go," he hissed, breath hot on my cheek, "so you brought me face to face with the one thing that would be enough torture to make me change my mind!"

The dark swerved, and I braced my free hand on his tunic, both to keep him at bay and to keep from falling over. Power was rising in him, humming along the seam between us like an electric current, and my heart jack-knifed in my throat. I was too exhausted to contain him if he turned on me now.

"Link," I panted, blind, grasping desperately at his sense of reason, "I don't know what you're talking about!"

His grip on my wrist tightened, pressing me flush against him with it, and my breath stilled.

"Don't," he breathed, bringing his mouth over my ear, "test me."

I closed my eyes, insides clenching, and offered a silent prayer to the goddess for strength. I couldn't contain him again. I couldn't run. I didn't know if I could reach the Sword if I tried. So I did the opposite. Instead of fighting him, instead of pushing him away or running or giving in to the plethora of other instincts making my blood pound, I held the fear close, accepted it for the inevitability it was and embraced the choices that had brought me there. I leaned into him, trembling, following the line of his cheekbone with mine until I mirrored him, breathing words into his ear, and laid a crumb of logic like an offering.

"Why? Why would I do that?" I swallowed reflexively, eyes darting blindly in the dark as I listened for an answer. "Why would I risk angering you now, when we're so close to answers?"

He was silent for a long time, and still. His grip softened. Our faces still touched, his breath fanning across the edge of my neck. It was almost as if he was lingering. It was almost an embrace.

"You don't even realize," he decided finally, his voice little more than a whisper, and loosed a sardonic breath. "You're as helpless as I am."

He let his hands fall, but didn't step away, or try to pry my fist off his tunic. I exhaled tremulously as his anger ebbed, relieved, pressing my face into his throat while my pulse calmed. He let me, his mind still turning over whatever he had seen in that mist, whatever he had sensed. We stayed like that, motionless and unseen and forgotten, as though we were part of the ruins themselves, surrounded by the echoes of my breath and heartbeat.

The adrenaline drained and my legs buckled. He caught me gingerly, easing me to the mossy floor as the darkness blotched and swam, and I let out a long breath, letting him; I had used more magic in the last day than I ever dared before, and the last jump had depleted what little was left over—intentionally, I realized numbly. It had effectively rendered me helpless. I shivered miserably, teeth chattering, as he let me go, succumbing to chills as my body fed on itself to replenish its energy reserves.

Fingertips splayed against mine as he crouched nearby, a knee brushed my elbow. Tiny indicators that he still existed somewhere in the darkness. Then he slid his hand behind my ear, its usual iciness replaced by an unexpected warmth, and gently lent me power. My eyes fluttered closed as I leaned into the siphon, an oscillating cord of warmth and energy unspooling down my neck and into my ribs, heating me from the inside out like a bowl of hot soup, and a soft sigh escaped my lips.

"This," I whispered, going boneless, "this would've been useful earlier."

"It's not very efficient."

I pondered that for a half a second, his outburst at the mouth of the woods and the countless jumps he had initiated since, before I decided, "You're tired."

"Yes. But you need it more than I do."

I wasn't about to argue, though it registered dimly someplace that I probably should. I reached up to cover his hand with mine instead, keeping it close. The tremors were quieting, reduced to broken shivers. I ground my jaw, fisted hands in the moss, grasping after the unexpected kindness. I said, "Thank you."

He grunted an acknowledgment, shifting his hand further down my neck. The pad of his thumb shifted over my pulse, feeling after the gentle rise and give under my skin. I swallowed, measuring my heartbeat with him. It sped when I thought of his anger. It galloped when I considered asking him about it. It felt ready to burst out of me when I decided I would try. He had to have felt it, but gave no indication he noticed.

I murmured, finally, wetting my lips apprehensively as I dared to breach the silence, "Are you going to tell me what got you so angry?"

The heat didn't slacken, though the muscles running through his wrist flexed, as though to pull away, or perhaps tighten his grip around my throat. He waited for a long time, so long I thought he might never reply, feeding me energy in lieu of answering.

He finally said, "This curse isn't what I expected."

"What were you expecting?"

"Something nameless."

I lost the nerve to question him, stonewalled twice by his ambiguity and not stupid enough to assume it was coincidence. I tried to empty my mind, revel in the warmth and the pleasantness of the energy instead, and right when I decided I was at peace with the mystery of it he spoke again.

"Do you know how curses are born?"

Something about his quietness, the delicacy with which he asked, gave me pause. He wasn't telling me because I had asked. He was telling me because he wanted to. I shifted, answered, "No."

"Not many do," he admitted dryly. "They think it's all anger and sorcery. And there is a magical component. But it's much more to do with emotion—with a feeling."

If it weren't for the warmth of the siphon, I would have felt suddenly cold. He was picking through words as though the wrong one might splinter the darkness or break the ground open beneath us. Everything he said was usually so harsh and precise, delivered without thought for consequence; the great care he was taking now was enough to make my confidence wilt.

Finally, I whispered, "I don't know much about curses."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." His thumb moved off my pulse, running along the ribbing of my windpipe to the hollow of my throat. His fingers spread closer to my shoulder, and I couldn't suppress the shudder that moved through me at the rush of heat. "Better?"

For a breathless, aching moment, I couldn't answer, steeped in a memory of that same touch, traveling with painful slowness along a bare shoulder, down an arm, enclosing a wrist before lips planted a soft kiss to the underside of it. I swallowed, managed, voiceless, "Better."

There was another wave of silence as he rummaged through history and magic and lore, through forgotten ages and secrets so old even the sages had lost track of them. Finally, he murmured, "Curses are… elegant, in a way. They never age. They can't starve. They're malleable, always adapting. Always finding ways to survive. Anchored to the world by the memory of something that doesn't exist anymore." There was a frown on his voice. "It's what makes us so difficult to kill."

His touch cooled, draining the last of the heat into my neck, and pulled away. I had to resist the urge to chase it. It was harder, facing the darkness without something tangible to assure me I wasn't alone. The bitter taste of stillwater seeped out of the ground, knitting with the cool, spongy sensations of dirt and moss under my fingernails to form an impression, the ghost of an image, of where we might be. More bogs, shrouded in darkness so ancient and pure I was beginning to forget what the sun looked like.

"Does it matter where they come from?" I muttered, bitterly, pulling my knees to my chest.

"Sometimes."

I ran fingers across my scalp, staring through oblivion, trying to make heads or tails of him and coming up empty. Then he asked,

"Do you know where the Calamity comes from?"

I blinked into the dark, startled. The Calamity was as old as Hyrule, as old as my bloodline, as old as time itself, it seemed. For all my studies, all my sessions with priests and sages and the sacred texts, I couldn't say I truly understood its source. The realization pricked a hole in the back of my head where I imagined my conscience might be. I admitted, "No."

"Knowing where something comes from can help you understand it, help you destroy it. Or, at least, understand why it should be destroyed."

I frowned. "You don't have to worry about me backing out of my promise. I'll keep it. I don't need your persuasion."

"But you should know," he insisted quietly, and I pursed my lips, silenced. He was silent for a long moment, too, and when his voice finally came out of the darkness it seemed to come from someplace much older, someplace so ancient even his 10,000 years seemed inconsequential. "Long before Hyrule was, demons and gods shed each other's blood to lay claim to this land and the gifts the gods that created it had left behind. The hatred of one of them burned so brightly it transcended death and time, taking shape and drawing breath in whatever form it pleased—and always has, and always will, unless we stop it."

For just an instant I could've sworn I could see his eyes in the darkness, burning with their own light—fire and ice, man and beast, part lure and part warning, part savior and part curse, imploring me to understand the gravity and the nature of his beginnings. But the nothing never parted.

"That's how I was born," he finally said. "Emerging out of hatred the world had long forgotten, still slick with malice and blood, not knowing anything except a desire to consume."

I swallowed, trying not to picture it: a primal evil dragging itself from a festering womb, wearing the beautiful, elfin features of a man some part of me had loved millennia ago, twisted up in hatred.

"That's not who you are," I said.

"Isn't it?" he bit out, and then sighed. "You don't know the first thing about who I am."

"Yes, I do," I whispered, the words slipping rebelliously from my mouth before I could think better of them. But he didn't argue the point.

The curse loomed around them like a shell blotting out the world: quiet, listening, eavesdropping. And though I was sure he hadn't moved, he suddenly seemed very far away.

He murmured, "That was all a very long time ago."

I frowned, emboldened by his failure to punish me and by something else, something older and more resolute, something wiser that I wasn't sure was entirely my own. "That hatred doesn't define you. If it did, I would already be dead, and Hyrule would be burning."

He spared the energy to summon a tiny flare of light again, burning above the curve of his hand like an orb of tinder, and used its glow to look me over. His scrutiny was unnerving as ever, as though he was trying to riddle out if I was sane, or stupid, or edible, or perhaps parts of all three. The light caught on the burning filament in his irises, breathed on them as they coiled, serpentlike, like molten ore in the dark.

"Refraining from tearing your throat out doesn't make me less evil," he said levelly, slowly, spelling out a truth I didn't want to hear. "Just patient."

"That's not true."

"You're wrong. If you knew how badly I wanted to—"

He checked, quelling a sudden, transparent hunger. He swallowed down ire and thirst, reaching with a trembling hand to touch my mouth, and though I braced myself for the burn of it it still stole the breath right out of me. I looked for his eyes in the light, but they were elusive, following the sweep of his finger. He seemed transfixed by the contact, by the reflexive part of my lips when I tried to breathe.

His touch was so cold it burned, so gentle it ached, so numbing I couldn't move—and it was a calculated, blistering reminder of what he was. He lingered until I trembled with him, until my heart constricted so tight in my chest I could hardly draw breath, until tears pricked at my eyes—the infuriating, frightened kind he could provoke at will. But I was beyond feeling ashamed of them. Instead of cowering I just let them fall, raising my chin in quiet defiance as they left glistening trails down to my jaw.

"Then what's stopping you?" I challenged.

He frowned, muttered bitterly, scathingly, "You are."

He dropped his hand and stood, pacing away like an animal trapped in a cage over the splash of marsh catching light beneath the mist, and I took a deprived, shuddering breath.

"None of that matters," he growled before I could sort myself out, raking a hand across his scalp. "It's not the point."

I clutched at moss, chest tight, and forced myself to breathe. "What is, then?"

"Why don't you ever think?" he bit out, fuming. "See beyond yourself? I'm talking about where this curse came from!"

"How should I know?" I managed, barking a breathless, incredulous laugh. "This curse is as old as anyone can remember, and the only hatred we've ever been taught to fear is yours!"

"Not hatred," he corrected me tautly, jaw clenching sporadically around the words. "It would've been so much easier if it was."

I sighed, shoulders sagging at his opacity, and got to my feet, holding my arms as I moved closer.

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't," he breathed, dragging a hand over his face, his frustration suddenly melting into resignation. He turned, eyes resting grudgingly on me. "A curse is nothing but a feeling, lingering beyond its inception and given form by power. Emotion and magic. It's why I'm consumed with hatred. It's literally what I am."

My mouth twisted again at his oversimplified origins, but I resisted the urge to argue. I could feel him coming undone, dredging truths he could hardly admit to himself out of depths too nebulous to chart.

"But this curse, this place—it's filled with disappointment, with unfulfilled promises." His teeth clenched around nothing, reflexively trying to keep the words in his throat. "With regret."

I froze as the implication settled, as the bitter memory of a decision she could never unmake welled up in my mind like tidewaters and the taste of that ancient sealing power flooded my mouth like bile. I loosed a shuddering breath and buried my face in one hand, overwhelmed by the rawness of it as it crashed over me again.

I whispered, "Oh, goddesses."

"You told me in the Lost Woods that she died regretting what she did, but I—" he cut off, stopping to smother something desperate, something ancient, that threatened to boil over. "I didn't want to believe it. I survived those 10,000 years by telling myself that this was what she wanted. That I was fulfilling her last wish. And now—"

His frustrated growl tapered off into nothing. A silence, thick, noxious, churned in the wake of that revelation, I unable to conjure words and he unwilling, lingering so long it might have become a curse in itself. His Zelda's regret had lingered on the edge of her kingdom since her death, faceless, nameless, unexplored and unquestioned—and in my ignorance I had unwittingly led him headlong into it.

"I'm sorry," I whispered haltingly. "I didn't know."

"I know you didn't. She did."

I lifted my eyes to meet his miserably. He searched my face for a long time, sometimes seeing me, sometimes not. He turned, jaw set, obscured by shadow as he stared into darkness.

"It's time I rid myself of her," he decided huskily. "She's haunted me long enough."

I watched helplessly, brow creased, as he held his hand out again, watching the mist pool haphazardly in his waiting palm, tasting the regret, feeling its form as he made to untangle it. Power built behind his eyes, trembling between them like heat.

I whispered, "What are you doing?"

He met my eyes for the briefest moment, unguarded and raw. He said, "Lifting it."

And then the curse split open.

The mist groaned and writhed like a great beast struck through its middle as darkness spiraled towards him, and I stumbled back, a scream catching in my throat as the gloom whipped around us, pulling at hair and cloth and stealing the air out of my mouth. I could hardly breathe, winds bludgeoning us from every direction and snuffing out the fairylight. Twilight filtered through the imperfections in the darkness, alighting his form as the curse barreled towards it. His profile appeared in intermittent flashes: head tipped back, jaw clenched, figure quaking as the black vortexed into his chest.

The sky bled through, the first of the evening stars, the sounds of burgeoning nighttime, the taste of fresh air sweeping down from the hills, as the groan escalated, turning hoarse, shrill, until it was grating as a scream.

And then, all at once, it was over.

Link stumbled, shaking, his hand clutched over his chest where the mist had plunged into him, but when I tried to go to him he held out his other hand to keep me at bay. I waited in anxious, brittle silence, only vaguely aware of the surrounding ruins, no longer shrouded in darkness. His eyes fixed on me. They crackled with glowing filament and old fury.

I wet my throat, frowning gently at him. "Are you all right?"

"Not really," he admitted, and then promptly changed the subject. "You recognize it?"

I scanned the ruins as a wind swept down from the hills and tousled its remains with the first gust of fresh air in centuries, my lips pressed into a line. The stone was cracked and ribbed with age, half-sunk into marshland and mottled with moss. The trees were leafless and rotted. Overgrowth obscured the columns and monuments beyond recognition. It felt familiar, but only insofar as I might feel a vague familiarity with a smell or a taste. It was just there, and yet always out of reach, like trying to remember a dream.

I sighed. "Not really."

He righted himself, panting, and gave the ruins a cursory once over. He took a seat on a downed pillar; after dithering a moment I joined him, at a loss for what else to do. We were quiet, absorbing a sight the world hadn't seen for thousands of years.

I glanced at him sidelong, worried what effect lifting the curse might've had on him. His hands were still shaking. His eyes were receded and dark—the eyes of someone who had seen something that would haunt them for the rest of their life. He was waiting, I realized. Waiting for me to make the next move. But I didn't know where to begin. Even with the curse gone, nothing triggered my borrowed memories.

My fingers bit at the rock. It felt like a dead end.

"There has to be something," I whispered, and he shifted forward pensively, pressing his mouth into his hands.

"When you said she spoke to you, told you to come here, I honestly wasn't sure I believed you," he said after a while. "It's clearly not a coincidence that we came to this place, but it might not be for the reasons you thought."

I studied him a moment and decided, "You still don't think there's answers here."

"No, I don't," he murmured. "Not the ones you want."

"Then what was all this for? Would she really lure us all this way just to torment you with something you can't change?"

"She brought us here because she knew I wouldn't be able to deny her," he countered, and my brow puckered. "I wouldn't have followed you anymore, Zelda, not if the choice was mine. But confronted with this, with her regret—"

He didn't finish, and he didn't have to. I nodded, averting my eyes. "I know."

He paused, jaw clenched, his aversion to discussing that part of his past with me etched in the grim lines of his face. "The solution you want isn't here. Wherever this is going, wherever this leads, there's a journey ahead of us yet. She knew that. And she knew I wouldn't follow without persuasion."

He tilted his head back in the ensuing quiet to stare at the stars unfurling in the sky above, sighing, and I did my best not to squirm, feeling thrown into places I didn't belong, intruding on his privacy in the worst possible way. He was whispering, I realized at length, a prayer or a curse in ancient Hylian spilling clandestinely out of his mouth as he resigned himself to his fate: tugged and pulled by marionette strings, both tied and held by a divine being he had found himself in love with so long ago.

"You were right," he finally murmured. "This was what she wanted. For me to follow you, as I once followed her."

My heart squeezed. This was all so far beyond me, beyond what I could have ever imagined this conflict would become. And the worst part was I was fooling no one. He knew how little I understood better than anyone.

His jaw spasmed again, his two halves warring, eyes burning as whatever chaos was churning in his head began to sort itself out.

"I'm not what I once was," he murmured at length. "I don't know what value it will have coming from a demon. But I can't change that, and I can't change what she wanted. So, for what it's worth…" His hands fisted on his knees, then opened, holding nothing. Bereft. "I swear myself to you."

My gaze darted back to his, lips falling apart. I whispered, weighed down by a sudden rush of guilt, "You don't have to do that."

"Who else am I going to serve?" he demanded. "Myself?"

"That's not—"

"Are you rejecting me?"

"What—No!"

"Then leave it alone," he growled.

I bit my cheek, folding my arms and leaning on them, feeling as inadequate as ever. He only lapsed into a nettled silence. It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. He held a two-thirds majority of the greatest power in all Hyrule and total mastery over magic that reached back eons, and I was stumbling blindly through an overgrown path without even questioning who had laid it before me. And now he was swearing himself to me.

Finally I scoffed, incredulous, "This _can't_ be the only reason we're here."

He bared a sliver of tooth at me. "Do you take that oath so lightly?"

"No!" I blurted, mortified, and then dragged both hands down my face. "But we couldn't have come all this way just so you could swear yourself to someone who has no idea how to save you. It doesn't make any sense."

He frowned, thinking.

"This place has been cursed since she died," he recounted. "There's nothing here now that wasn't there then. And there was no way to undo something like this. Not here."

I looked over the ruins again, willing myself to remember some detail, be struck with some flicker of inspiration, that might be the key. But it was as alien as ever.

For the first time, I allowed myself to doubt. Maybe there wasn't an answer here anymore. Maybe there never was.

"Why would she do this?" I whispered, hopeless, but he scoffed at me.

"Zelda, she's been dead for 10,000 years. She doesn't exist anymore, except in your subconscious. All that's left of her is here," he said, planting two fingers against my forehead. "Everything that's happened, everything you think she's said or she's done, has ultimately come from your own mind. She didn't lead us here. You did."

My throat closed. I was suddenly teetering very close to the precipice of tears again. I swallowed them down with great effort, my insides trembling.

"No, that can't—" I began, but the more I dwelled, the more I realized he was right. My eyes went wide.

Had I really been so blind?

I turned to hide my face behind a curtain of hair, wishing Hyrule would just split under my feet and swallow me whole. If that was true, then it meant I had conjured all of this. I had fallen victim to my own memories, my own magic, never questioning the validity of it. It meant he was right about me and always had been. I was young and inexperienced and stupid, wielding power I didn't understand and couldn't control, burdened with all the responsibilities and consequences of a decision I hadn't even made and that I didn't know how to begin coping with.

I took a hasty breath, trying to swallow down a sob, and got to my feet—to run, maybe, though I couldn't say where. His hand shot out, trapping my wrist before I could get too far away, and stood after me. The recoil brought me back to him, eyes and face red and shimmering, lips trembling and tasting of salt.

"Just when I think you're beginning to understand, you always prove me wrong," he said, mouth twisting humorlessly. He brushed tears from my jaw as I shrunk out from his scrutiny, and I grudgingly met his eyes. "Why do you always fear what makes you who you are?"

I sniffled in spite of myself. "Because I can't control it. I only make things worse."

"You'll never learn to control it if you keep running away from it." He thumbed at another tear, frowning thoughtfully, and my face crumpled tighter. "You can't change what you are, Zelda, any more than I can."

I sniffled again, dragging my free wrist across my face as my mind tumbled over itself, over bits of possibility that snagged at my thoughts like raised rootstock on a footpath, and my muscles eased with the soothing release of logic snapping together like puzzle pieces.

"If everything that led us here is in my mind," I posed slowly, blinking away blurriness, "then are you telling me the answers are there, too?"

His mouth twitched, eyes twinkling softly as though he wanted to smile. "Only you know the answer to that."

"Then come with me," I said, breathless, spiraling towards hope. "If the answer is somewhere in my memories—"

But what hint of a smile there was in his eyes vanished. "You'll forgive me if I'm not eager to follow you there again."

"You said you would swear yourself to me," I argued, and his eyes narrowed.

"Only you would be so quick to use that against me."

"And what good is that word if you won't follow me where I have to go?" I demanded, and his gaze shuttered. I chanced, hoping his resolve was weakening, "Please?"

He clenched the muscles in his jaw, cornered, and I mirrored him, refusing to back down. After a long moment he finally moved, pulling us both back to the pillar.

"I'll bridge our minds," he iterated, facing me squarely. "I'll guide the memories."

I nodded, swallowing, nerves in a sudden jumble. I hadn't missed the warning in his voice. It was not a concession he made lightly, and if I overstepped my bounds again there would be consequences, one way or another.

He reached out with both hands, sighing out his nose, and touched my mind.

The ruins morphed around us, damage and age filling out again and the pale spattering of moonlight giving way to diffused orange sunbeams. The trees dripped blossom petals; they drifted lazily in the afternoon warmth, trickling with an eerie steadiness. Like grains of sand falling through the neck of an hourglass. A woman knelt beneath them with her knight protector, her eyes glazed over with a ghostly vacancy, feeling things, seeing things, that were not of that world.

"He's getting stronger all the time," she said, splaying her fingers in the grass beneath her unconsciously, as though she were feeling after tremors in the earth. "I always sense him now. I think he can sense me, too."

Her knight frowned, but didn't budge from his place guarding her, dutifully holding his broadsword, planted tip down at his feet. "How long? Months? Weeks?"

"Days," she corrected, with chilling certainty. "His hunger is driving him now."

He gripped the hilt tighter, every nerve in his body burning with the desire to shield her from that, to take the burden of that evil off her shoulders. But it wasn't his place. He glanced down at her, at her pale, unseeing eyes. He gripped it harder until his knuckles turned white.

She reached over blindly, her hand resting on his calf, on the leather of his boot, and a sad smile played on her lips. "I'm glad we were able to come here one last time."

He scanned the ruins for the umpteenth time for signs of danger. For signs of anyone at all. The Sheikah monks had scattered as soon as they had arrived, and hadn't reappeared since. They were alone. He knelt beside her and leaned in closer, but then lost his nerve, throat bobbing as he swallowed.

He promised, voice trembling, "We can stay as long as you want."

I loosed a breath harbored too long, knots spreading through my chest and stomach. I was hardly aware of myself at all until Link's hand closed like a vice over my wrist, startling me out of my reverie, his eyes burning with orange coils that gleamed hot against the afternoon sun.

"Focus," he growled. "Don't forget what we came here for."

I nodded weakly, letting him pull me forward. The dream melted away like dust caught up in rainwater. We were moving upstream through memories, through time, the illusory ruins filling with our duplicates reliving a dozen moments. I saw them caught in a sudden rain, breathless, laughing, fingers intertwining hesitantly in the stolen solitude and the contact so rare it felt to both of them that it might ignite. I saw the gentle smile she gave him when they were in public, a polite show of gratitude that masked a much deeper affection, and that he could see right through. I saw the strained silence between them, the artificial distance, that seemed to spawn out of nothing, but that meant everything. I saw them taking shelter behind one of the stone dragons, fighting an argument that had them both nearly in tears—an argument they were both losing.

I looked away, breath stolen, overwhelmed by the onslaught of borrowed emotion, turning, wandering aimlessly for relief, when Link found both my wrists again.

"Zelda, focus!"

"I can't breathe!" I cried, tears budding in my eyes as I tried to sort through the longing and agony of another lifetime. "I feel everything she felt, and it hurts to look at it anymore, and I—"

I pressed my mouth into my hand, quelling the rest. To my surprise, that actually gave him pause. His expression softened, even if just a little, and with an unpleasant, sodden knot in my throat, I realized it was empathy. Because he was feeling it, too.

"Do you want to stop?"

"No," I warbled. "Not until we get what we came for."

"It might not exist," he reminded me, and I nodded once, tensely.

"Keep going."

He nodded and pulled us forward again, guiding me through moments that tumbled by in waves, filtering through my fingers like water or sunlight. Time lost its meaning altogether eventually, blurring around us as seconds bled into minutes and then hours, or days, or years, or eons. In some ways I felt blind, stumbling aimlessly through history without ambition or direction. But at the same time I knew we were getting closer to what we wanted; I could feel it, like heat from a fire brushing softly against an outstretched hand, and moved unwittingly towards it.

I saw the ruins, encircling them, shrouding them in secret, blotting out the rest of the world as they worked to shield the kingdom from destruction. I saw the monks, always ready to do Hylia's bidding, always seeking her sight, always weaving the tapestry of Hyrule's history into their collective memory as a means to foretell the future. I saw the blue-eyed version of myself and her knight, younger and less experienced—just as devoted to each other, but less sure, less familiar, less wise, puzzling out their destiny and leaning on one another for strength.

Feeling that in her, rich, depthless, unending, I had to admit I longed for it, too, for companionship deeper than what my champions, or even a lover, could give: the fellowship that could only come from someone who shared the same fate.

Then I saw them resting beneath dogwood trees, so early on, before they had let things get so complicated.

_Do you ever wonder what you'll do… afterward?_

Link was about to pull me forward again, lift my consciousness out of the scene and plant it somewhere else, but I fought him, latching onto the unexpected familiarity of the image.

"Wait," I breathed, watching the peace and their innocence amidst the pillars and monuments, and he furrowed his brow at me. "I've seen this before. That was here?"

He frowned, glancing at the memory of his past self with barely disguised disdain. "What of it?"

_Have you heard about Maz's latest invention?_

"A shrine," I murmured, not taking my eyes off the spot where, beneath the dogwoods and oaks, a princess of Hyrule had once sat with its Hero and tried in vain to ignore an approaching catastrophe. "She said he was building a new type of shrine."

The vision ended, blurring into dappled colors and sunlight. He didn't answer, his gaze sliding away again, shifting, searching, as he digested her words. Then they stilled, fixed on some mundane place near his boots, and I stepped closer.

"You know what that means," I urged him softly, "don't you?"

He held my gaze, grudgingly, tethered, before he said, his voice nearly as quiet, "It was just a prototype."

"It was here? In Thyphlo?"

"No, of course not," he murmured. "It was on the Great Plateau."

"Link," I breathed, relieved and exasperated at once. "If there's even a chance—don't you see? A shrine with that kind of power? It could purge the Calamity from you!"

His eyes, dark, troubled, flickered up to mine, surprised. Then they shifted, slipping again out of darkness, out of uncertainty, back into tired, practiced armor.

"Do you realize what you're asking of me?" he finally demanded. "Another journey, straight into the heart of Hyrule?"

"I know we can do this," I told him, latching onto that hope, but he scoffed darkly.

He countered, so quietly it felt wrong to argue, "You know less than you think."

My heart sank, my enthusiasm tempered by the realization that no matter how promising a solution was I couldn't force him to reach out and take it. I took a meaningful step forward, steeling myself with a gentle breath.

"Will you come with me?"

He made to answer, but then his eyes unfocused, leaving him eerily vacant, and he took a stiff, slow breath.

He murmured, "We're not alone."

I felt it then, something corporeal, a touch, skin on skin, and it was so foreign after so long in my own mind that I gasped aloud. I panicked, realizing we were seconds from leaving this place, from facing something unknown, and I dove towards him, his name on my lips shattering the dream like iron impacting glass.

My eyes fluttered open as our connection severed, as I snapped back into my own consciousness, my own self, my own body. Link was across from me, still sitting on the downed pillar, a glistening, rosy barrier between us and the gleam of a scimitar catching firelight at his neck.

The champions had found us, and they weren't taking any chances.

Daruk had broadened his spell, encasing me in its humming shell. Mipha and Revali were on either side, weapons aimed at his heart at point-blank range. And Urbosa had his head angled up by his hair, the Sword of the Seven poised to draw a deathstroke across his throat.

"Talk fast," she advised as his eyes drew into focus. "Or I take off your head this time."

He glared witheringly, but didn't deign to answer, his gaze sliding back to me.

"They're more loyal to you than you know," he hissed out of clenched teeth, rage boiling, barely harnessed, through his veins. "They know I could kill them with a breath if I wanted to."

I pounded a fist on the barrier, heart galloping, dizzy with fear, as the taste of old magic swirled around me like a cloud: vibrations of thunder and wind and molten rock, the cool sensation of water, the jarring, metallic presence of malice, all piercing my teeth and turning the edges of my vision white and threatening to devour each other.

"Let me go," I gasped, eyes watering. "Let me go!"

"Who are you?" Urbosa demanded, angling the blade deeper. "What have you done to her?"

He ignored her again, harnessing my eyes. The coils pulsed and undulated against the ice beneath, steady as a heartbeat. And for a brief, breathtaking moment, I saw something there beyond my wildest imaginings, something old and familiar and heartrendingly undeserved.

Trust.

"Stop panicking," he guided me quietly. "Your magic is stronger than theirs."

His voice led me as it had, I realized numbly, so many times before. I opened my fist, feeling the spell's ancient composition on my fingertips, the flinty, fiery roots of it, birthed of mountains and belonging to mountains. It was nothing like my power, all brilliant, searing light and stardust. I summoned it, just for a moment, pitting it against the barrier, earth and heat against sunbeams and starfire.

It shattered. Behind me, Daruk grunted, stumbling back as his power splintered and ricocheted. I could feel the residue of my own power sloughing off my body, radiating from my skin, from my eyes, in a golden glow.

I mustered the courage to meet their eyes—owlish, churning with disbelief and no little fear. Link's were impassive, watching me come into myself and my power with so little reaction it could only have been expected.

And I couldn't look away. I drank strength from his constancy, his immovability, like it was second nature. Like it was an addiction.

"Let him go, Urbosa," I whispered, finally, "and I'll tell you everything."


	9. Hunger

I sat, bathed in sunlight, at Thyphlo's edge. The waterways had already begun to heal in the absence of the curse, the long-dormant moat and putrid mudpots feeding off their old aquifers until, once in a great while, clear water in amongst the clouds of silt would catch light and reflect it back in brilliant diamond shapes.

It was really quite amazing how much had changed overnight.

Mipha and Revali had gone to fish at the nearby rim of Lake Mekar, where 10,000 years of decay hadn't made the waters uninhabitable, and Daruk and Urbosa had stayed behind—ostensibly to protect me, though I suspected it had more to do with keeping me company than anything.

I resisted the urge to look back at the ruins looming over my shoulder, where the Calamity had stalked off hours ago and had yet to return.

Link hadn't let me explain until I had been fed and given something to drink, but once I was allowed convincing the others of his true identity hadn't been as difficult as I had feared—due in no small part to the sacred sword slung across his back, though all told it hadn't done much to ease tensions between them. They didn't trust him, and he wasn't particularly inclined to keep them alive. Which he mentioned. Several times.

My shoulders sagged. I wanted to be angry with him for being difficult. But he was what he was, and expecting him to be anything else didn't make me an optimist. It just made me stupid.

Urbosa left the cooking fire she was tending and sauntered closer, summoned, it seemed, by my negative energy. She had a knack for being exactly where I needed her to be precisely when I needed her to be there. A Gerudo's legendary intuition, she would've called it. Sometimes I suspected it was just written all over my face, and it was merely a matter of being observant and invested.

She planted a hand on her hip and looked over the hills. Then she glanced at me, eyes warm and pensive and a thoughtful smile curving her cobalt lips. "You've changed, Princess."

I grimaced. That was a massive understatement. I could hardly tell the two sets of memories swimming through my head apart anymore. But I wondered what aspect of that she had seen. "Have I?"

"You're stronger."

"I know," I murmured, mouth twisting. "Sometimes when I use that power I don't feel like myself anymore. Like a stranger in my own body."

"Well," she amended, squinting into the light as she joined me on the ground, "that wasn't exactly what I meant."

A gust of wind blew stiffly from the west down the hills, stifling conversation as it pulled at hair and cloth and carried into the ruins, rattling leaves and churning dust as it went, coaxing them back to life with ardent breath as though they were a half-dead ember. Somewhere in those ruins, the wind was raking over the Calamity, pulling at him with as much success as it did the carved stones he walked among. I dug my fingers into the moss and didn't turn around.

Urbosa clarified, when I forgot to answer, "I meant you're more resilient."

I sighed without meaning to, and Daruk, his massive brow furrowed, cleared his throat and ambled perceptively away from the cooking fire and out of earshot, mumbling something about quarrying a decent lunch.

"I don't feel like it," I whispered, once we were alone. "It feels like I'm coming apart at the seams."

Urbosa was quiet a moment, cushioning her counsel, watching me with eyes that were fierce and gentle at once. "Have you considered that he might be right?"

My mouth twisted again. "I can't explain it to you, Urbosa. I know who he is and I've seen what he's done, and if I don't—" I stopped short, puffing a sigh into the air. "If I didn't at least try to save him, I could never live with myself."

 _Try_ , I had to amend, because there was no guarantee this would work. But the truth was I didn't know what I would do with myself if it didn't.

The memories surfacing in my brain were coming more vibrantly since the curse had lifted, triggered, it seemed, by tapping deeper into my powers, or perhaps by the influx of memories Link had exposed me to while we were connected. There were still plenty of holes, ultimately leaving me with more questions than answers; but the _emotional_ investment in those memories was stronger than it had ever been.

Urbosa smiled again at me, reaching over to tame a matted, unruly wave of hair that didn't want to sit behind my ear, but it was a sad smile. "There's a fine line between passion and stubbornness, Little Bird," she said, "and you're walking it."

"What choice do I have?" I murmured, but Urbosa was decidedly unmoved.

"He was the Hero once, and he made his decision long before any of us were even born," she reminded me, looking for evasive eyes. "He's ready to give his life for Hyrule."

"I know he is. But I'm not."

Urbosa pressed her lips into a thin line, but she didn't force the issue. Something warm, something maternal, had seeped through her diamond-tough exterior, moving her against her better judgment. Finally, she decided, "You need to eat."

I nodded, rising to move closer to the fire and grateful for the change of subject. I'd already been wrestling with Link over his own demise for days—and though it came as no surprise that the Champions sided with him on the issue, it was draining to have to hold my ground against all of them at once.

They didn't understand. How could they? They hadn't felt his soul fracture beneath lithe fingertips, splintered into a thousand tortured pieces that I could weave with threads of hate and malice, hadn't felt him strung on my needle and pulled taut to snap as I cross stitched what was left of him back together into some mutilated, unconscionable mockery of what he had been in the name of divine providence. A goddess, playing with her embroidery.

I trembled as the memory drained. They feared him, what he was capable of, when the one they should have been fearing was me.

The unmistakable silhouette of a Rito streaked overhead, wings spread wide as it circled the ruins, and Mipha marched up the ridge not far behind. She joined us at the cooking fire without preamble, immediately setting about skewering their catch, her fair features drawn with concentration. She was naturally soft spoken, but her silence was distinctly artificial. The result of the revelatory deluge the night before, probably. I wanted to say something—thank her for the food, or reassure her somehow—but I couldn't find the words.

Revali touched down a few moments later, beak tugged down into a frown. The feathers at his neck puffed aggravatedly, betraying what might otherwise have appeared to be a cool exterior. He was least happy of all with… well, everything.

Urbosa reached to turn the spit without turning to acknowledge him. "Well?"

"Still skulking," he murmured, and then tilted his head towards me, eyes glittering with impatience. "Quite the paladin, your hero."

Urbosa arched an unamused brow at him, but I ignored the jab, fixating instead of the promise of a hot meal. Hunger was so simple, so easily remedied, compared to other torments. We waited in stilted silence, listening to scales sizzle and staring through plumes of smoke.

"We should decide on a route," Urbosa said, finally, pulling a skewer off the fire when it was done and handing it to me. "The Great Plateau isn't exactly isolated."

I picked at the trout, distracted. There was no question in their minds that they would take the journey with me. I had fallen into a restless sleep the night before trying to convince myself that it was for the best that they be left behind. But the truth was I wanted them with me. They couldn't compete with Link's magic, or even my own, but their companionship meant warmth and compassion and support, and I was beyond starved for all three.

I frowned privately, weighing the consequences. Link would _hate_ it.

"We could take the road through Rowan Plain," Mipha suggested, and Revali cocked his head in reluctant acknowledgement.

"It would keep us away from civilization," he murmured, frowning at his fish. "Keep the collateral damage to a minimum."

I nodded, stifling a sigh; my Rito Champion certainly had a knack for phrasing the truth in the ugliest way possible.

"What about him?" Urbosa murmured, glancing back through the marsh as she pulled another skewer off the fire.

"He doesn't eat," I murmured, refusing to follow her gaze, and Revali made a pleased noise as he swallowed down a mouthful.

"Finally," he intoned, just as Daruk rejoined them, the crook of his arm full of foraged rocks, "a redeeming quality."

"There's nuthin' redeeming about not eating," he murmured, munching pensively on a boulder the size of his fist.

He settled cross-legged beside us, his massive brow furrowed with wrinkles deep as the ridges lining the Eldin Foothills. Even disturbed, Daruk radiated a positive energy that never failed to lift the spirits of those around him. I tried to muster smile, but it felt tight across my mouth.

Sitting around that little fire, surrounded by the Champions, by their warmth, I suddenly realized how very, very cold I had been the last few days. I had been in close proximity to evil for so long I hardly noticed it anymore. I stared down at my half-eaten fish, trying to steel myself to confront Link with my plan, and within the span of a heartbeat my appetite was gone. I never wanted to be that cold again.

"We should leave soon," I murmured, setting the unfinished skewer down and excusing myself—quickly, before their sudden, rigid alarm and exchanged glances could produce an objection.

This was definitely a conversation the two of us were better off having in private.

I moved headlong back into the ruins, feeling after his presence. He wasn't terribly far, his shadow pulsing warmly as the vibrations of my perception pinged off his form. I snaked between massive, etched pillars and beneath the bared teeth of dragon heads, looming like great protectors along Thyphlo's rim and at its crossroads, and moved silently through the blind gaze of its bird-torches. They watched me pass out of hollow, lidless eyes, sitting stone-still amidst trees and altars like sentinels stationed eons ago and never relieved.

Sometimes I could see it all as it was before—still old, still foreign—surrounded by a lush grove and constantly doted on by the Sheikah monks who had taken up residence there long after the great ancestors had moved on in search of new conquests, their marks left on a world that they would eventually forget, but that could never forget them. And the monks, swaddling themselves in the ancient energy and the peace of the natural world seeping from that place like a blanket, would listen for Hylia's whispers in the old stone and in the wind, letting her inspire them in new and wondrous ways and birthing in those ethereal, connected moments, images of monumental beasts, aglow with azure fire and light, zealous to do the goddess's bidding.

Naturally, the Princess with the Blood of the Goddess was always welcome there.

I shivered, confronted again with the barrenness that had overtaken that place as the visions receded from beneath my irises. There had been so much promise there, so much hope. So much ambition.

And it had all come to nothing.

I shuffled to a standstill, my mind suddenly drawing too many parallels between those ruins and myself. I scanned sprawling peat moss and ruins and replayed fervent arguments from the night before, a knot of fear tangling behind my ribs. Doubt whispered that my fate was as twisted as theirs had been, bound inescapably to the goddesses and their will but ultimately doomed to fail; whispered that my ambition, my hope, would come to nothing, leaving me as rotted and haunted as this place.

Link's voice echoed out of memory, tinged with a hint of a smile.

_Since when does the Princess of Hyrule give way to doubt?_

But that had been a different princess, and I was reasonably certain, if I asked him now, that he wouldn't have such words of encouragement for me. He would accuse me of endangering the entire kingdom for the sake of one man, remind me that our journey was an exercise in futility, and then hand me a broadsword and tell me, with eyes like ice and smelting copper, to drive it through his heart.

I brushed the image aside and forced myself to move on. Several winding turns later I found him sitting on the remains of a column half-buried beneath a tree that, preserved somehow inside that curse for 10,000 years and against all odds, had begun sprouting new leaves already. His back was turned, but I knew he must have felt me coming long before I ever laid eyes on him. His voice, part wind and part stone, seemed to belong to the ruins themselves.

"Have you gotten rid of them?"

"No," I sighed, hugging my arms as I drew closer, "I haven't gotten rid of them."

The sweet smell of sunkissed earth and moss wafted up from beneath my feet as I moved, whispering gently that autumn was stirring awake, ready to renew that forgotten place with a proper rot. There was an inviting stillness in that heat, tempting me to join him in it rather than disturb it. And the temptation was strong. I was tired, and unmotivated, and he still hadn't acknowledged me even though I only stood a few feet away.

I chanced, quietly, "What are you doing?"

"Thinking."

I lowered myself onto the lip of the makeshift bench, my posture slightly collapsed, and ran a hand across my scalp. I could guess what about. He had come face to face with the last, lingering remnants of the woman he loved yesterday, and then destroyed them for me.

He asked, suddenly, softly, "Did you dream?"

I blinked at him, addled, and nodded.

"I've forgotten what it's like," he murmured, staring into the ruins, or perhaps through them, into another time. "But I think being trapped in your vision must have been close."

I tried to swallow, but my throat had closed. Had that only been yesterday? Only now, having experienced the turbulence of the memories he led me through the night before, could I begin to fathom what kind of torture waking up in that illusion, charged with so much remembered emotion, must have been.

"Dreams feel so real in the moment," he mused quietly, "and it isn't until later on, looking back, that you realize how ridiculous it all was."

I stared at my feet, voiceless, trying not to remember how tightly he had held me, how carefully, how desperately, his mouth had moved with mine; trying not to remember the conflict scrawled across his face when he realized what I had done.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, swallowed again by the image of the untouchable, dispassionate goddess, playing with her needlepoint. "When I conjured that memory I didn't—" I faltered, my eyes slipping closed. "I never meant to make you relive that."

He didn't answer for a long time. Then he murmured, "Yes, you did."

I looked up at him, surprised, miserable, but his gaze wasn't harsh.

"I was losing control, and the part of you that knew me best knew what it would take to stop me."

His eyes locked easily with mine. The coils in them turned, undulating rings of fire, always pulling me in, holding me still, whispering things I couldn't make out that struck fear and curiosity in me at once. They pulsed in mesmerizing tandem with my heartbeat. I shook my head, breaking free of their spell long enough to respond. "I won't do that to you again. You have my word."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," he sighed, mouth turning down. "You have a harder time controlling your power than I do."

I frowned, wishing I could argue. But the truth was I hardly understood what I had done. Cornered by his logic, embittered by the empty sound of my own apologies, I lapsed into another silence. The heat rose from the stone, from the earth, surrounding us with the woody scent of dried sphagnum. But he spoke before that alluring stillness could form again.

"You didn't come looking for me just to tell me that," he breathed. "What do you want?"

I reluctantly met his eyes. The pulse in them still mirrored the pulse in my chest. "I want to bring the Champions with us."

He tilted his head slowly, studying me, pulling at the unspoken threads encircling us both like a web until he seemed to know everything, _see_ everything, that I hadn't wanted him to see. It made me feel naked. "You're here to invoke my oath, then?"

I bit down on nothing, holding his gaze. Only he could turn so quiet a question into such a brutal accusation. "I'd rather not have to."

"I see."

His eyes never left mine, boring so deep into them and for so long that I could feel the glowing filament burn into my brain and alight it from within, turning everything inside my skull to ash. I whispered, "I wish you wouldn't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you expected this of me."

"How should I look at you?" he asked, and suddenly, feeling bare under his scrutiny, watching a quiet, insatiable hunger lurking in his eyes, I felt my face heat. "You can't expect me to not see what's right in front of me."

I mirrored his scornful gaze, stung, and rose sluggishly to my feet, turning with nowhere to go. The ruins stared back at me out of empty, sun-bleached eyes, and he rose behind me like a cold shadow at my back.

"I don't know what else to do with you," I finally admitted, whirling despairingly. "I can't control you. I can't reason with you. Does invoking an oath you gave me of your own volition really make me some kind of a monster?"

"The oath is yours to do with as you please," he conceded. " _I_ am yours. But you're a harsh mistress, Your Highness."

I swallowed thickly. When I found my voice, it wobbled. "Then I'll release you from it. Once this is over."

"And using that oath like a leash until then—is that something you learned on your own, or something remembered?" he asked levelly. "You've twice coerced me into obedience against my express wishes already, and it hasn't even been a day."

"I know that," I bit loudly, cornered, too many emotions stirring in my chest at once—the frustration, the guilt, the restless, ancient need for his constancy that I still didn't understand. "But I need them, Link, can you understand that? I can't—I _can't_ do this alone."

I trembled in the beat of silence that followed, chilled, suddenly, as though he had reached out and touched me. But he was remarkably still.

"Maybe you are a monster," he murmured, irises pulsing a hypnotic rhythm and drifting close enough that his proximity was beginning to make my head spin. "Maybe you're more like me than you want to admit."

My brow scrunched. I tried, meagerly, "That's not—"

"The similarities are uncanny, really," he droned. "You manipulate others to get your way. Hurt them, if you have to. You put Hyrule in grave danger on a daily basis. And your power is completely out of control."

"You know I'm doing the best I can," I whispered, hurt. "That I'm trying to save you, before there's nothing left to save!"

"Yes, Zelda, I know exactly what you're trying to do," he sneered, eyes narrowing. "And let me give you a piece of advice, from one monster to another. The best intentions can come back to haunt you in the most debilitating ways."

And then he tore himself from me without a second glance, moving west through the heat of the marsh, and I shuddered where he left me, feeling hollow and torn to shreds. I turned, staring after him, seeing the Calamity, seeing a protector, seeing a man from a memory and his contradiction at once.

And I just couldn't leave well enough alone.

"Link, wait," I panted, pained, as I caught up to him. "What are you saying?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," he growled, sparing me a bitter glance, and I sighed at him, frustrated.

"I don't understand."

"No," he rumbled, moving so quickly through bog and ruin that I was stumbling to keep up, "you never do."

"Stop," I demanded, snatching him by the elbow, and he did, fixing me in a glare that nearly made the words lodge in my throat. "I know none of this has happened the way you wanted it to. I know you're afraid the Champions will set you off, that you're afraid of losing control. But you don't have to be. I can _prevent_ that—"

"Can you?" he cut me off, his volume so unexpected that I couldn't bring myself to finish. "Do you really think if I wasn't fighting with every fiber of my being to restrain that part of myself that I couldn't crush you?"

I swallowed, watching the monster stir restlessly in his eyes. He snatched his elbow away, leaving my hand grasping at nothing in the air between us and my mind grasping at a response. But there was nothing I could say to that.

"Believe it or not, I understand that you need them," he growled, holding his hand out in a taut gesture between us. "I do. You were never meant to do this alone. You were supposed to have a Hero by your side."

My brow puckered, something buried in my soul renting in two. "Link—"

"Let me finish," he insisted. "Those Champions are no substitute. And they may well endanger this whole, absolutely insane endeavor in ways you could never imagine. But I will do everything in my power to prevent that—for you, because I'm sworn to you. Do you understand that, at least?"

I stared at him for too long, heart trapped in my throat. For just an instant, like a burst of lightning casting a shadow, I saw the man separated from the beast, disfigured by hate and bound in armor but still very much alive, and understood who it was that I unwittingly harbored such loyalty towards. I nodded, curiously dispassionate. As far as epiphanies went, it left a rather bland aftertaste, as though some part of me had been aware of it all along, as I was of my own breathing, or my own heartbeat.

I whispered, "Yes."

"Good."

He turned back to the path out of the marsh, and I didn't try to draw him out again. There was still so much hanging stale and unspoken in the air between us, but I was learning to live with it. Learning to accept that some things were better left unsaid.

Sometimes, suffering his stony silence and his unyielding pace, I thought he was running away from something.

When we emerged from the ruins, we found the camp dismantled and the supplies packed, and the Champions waiting for us in a variety of postures suggesting indignation. Even Mipha, usually so genteel, sitting with her trident planted tip down in the dirt, looked like a force to be reckoned with.

"Well, well," Revali sighed, exchanging a meaningful glance with the others as we crossed Thyphlo's edge into the remnants of the camp, "won't this just be terribly fun?"

"That's not the word I'd use, no," I breathed, giving my hair an absent, weary tousle. "Are we ready to leave?"

"Ready, little princess," Daruk answered, perhaps a little too tenaciously, and earned himself a glare from Revali. He screwed his leathery lips sideways at him and shrugged.

"Good," I said, ignoring the exchange; I was much more concerned with Link's oscillating mood than theirs, watching him stare them down out of my peripheral vision. "I'd like to reach the Breach by nightfall, and we're getting a late start as it is."

There was a beat where no one moved, I waiting for my orders to be enacted, and my Champions hesitant to turn their backs on the entity that had nearly destroyed them all not a week prior. Link finally broke the stand off, passing me an agitated glance as he moved between us all to take point and set the pace.

And, moving as unwaveringly as if it were an instinct, I followed him.

The others trailed into place behind me in a tight-lipped procession, strung together by the undercurrent of disgruntled silence emanating from the front of the line, and I stared at his back, processing. I would follow him to the ends of the earth, I realized, if he gave me a reason. It was like he was a magnet or an anchor, pulling me along wherever he liked. Was that influence residue from a memory, tethered to that deep-seated loyalty I had glimpsed in the ruins? Or was it something ingenuine, the result of some kind of manipulation on his part? I hated not knowing. I hated realizing the answer would make little difference.

An hour into our journey, as we descended Mount Drena into the Aldor Foothills, conversation was still stifled; but Urbosa had nudged herself close enough to ask after me, and not for the first time since we had set off.

"Are you sure you're all right?" she murmured. Apparently my earlier attempts at nonchalance had been less than convincing, and when I opened my mouth to try again, Urbosa interrupted pertly, "Because you haven't stopped staring daggers at the back of his head since we left."

"It isn't his fault," I muttered, and Urbosa's lips twisted.

"You're quick to defend him."

"Well I have to be, don't I? You'd all take his head off if I turned my back."

"You don't give me enough credit. I'd ask your permission first."

"It would be one thing if you believed in this mission," I scoffed, ignoring her quip. "But as it is you're all only here because you serve me."

She arched a fiery brow at me, eyes drifting to the Calamity. "I think he's riding the same sand seal."

I raked my hair back with both hands, holding it taut at the nape of my neck, and sighed. "It's complicated."

"Well you know what _I_ think," Revali horned in, wings crossed, and Urbosa rolled her eyes.

"Yes, we all know what you think."

"I think he's a ticking time bomb and this whole expedition is insane," he carried on anyway, and I dropped my hair.

"Well, that makes at least two of you."

"I don't trust that Calamity as far as I can throw him," Daruk chimed in, "but we have faith in you, Princess."

But I wasn't naive. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Mipha turning away, obscuring her reaction. Of course they must have questioned my judgment. But did it run deeper than that? Had they begun to regret swearing themselves to follow me in the first place? Did they think I was leading them all into disaster?

"That's kind of you, Daruk," I murmured, swallowing my fears. "Thank you."

"Do you?" Revali snorted, and I blinked at him, addled.

"Do I what?"

"Do you trust him?"

My tongue went numb in my mouth, tingling with the answer I wanted to give. Against all reason, against every warning he had ever given me, against every instinct in my body, yes, I trusted him. Not in the way I could trust them, of course, expecting their implicit honesty, sacrifice, and obedience. But insofar as his deepest motivations were concerned, I trusted that his loyalties lay entirely with me. But could I convey that to them?

Did I even dare admit it aloud, when he might overhear?

"Are you finished?"

Link had appeared at my side before I could formulate an answer, frowning. I frowned, too. I wanted to snap at him, push back for once, but the truth was our pace had slowed considerably. We were falling behind.

"We were _talking_."

"Yes," he growled, snatching up my hand in his before I could argue, "and I have full confidence in your ability to do that and _keep moving_ at the same time."

I bit back the retort that bubbled to my lips, letting him drag me away as the others bristled. Picking a fight with him in front of them wasn't worth the potential fallout, even if he was making it tempting. Playing diplomat was tiresome enough as it was. Still, I was in no mood for his tyranny, and a glance backward at my friends, all of them staring daggers at the exchange, told me I had to do something.

"Would you stop?" I hissed under my breath. "I'm perfectly capable of traveling under the power of my own two feet."

"I wouldn't resort to dragging you along if you would use them."

"Can't you be reasonable? We weren't even talking for two minutes!"

"I think you've spent more than enough time clinging to your friends," he spat, and I blinked.

"Are you saying—" I began, and then backtracked, trying to appear less subversive. He would never admit to something as petty as jealousy. I licked dry lips, thinking. "Am I not giving you enough attention?"

"What I'm saying," he growled, giving me a firm tug, "is that if you can't keep up I'll put you under and _carry you_ the rest of the way."

I frowned, miffed. "And have to deal with the Champions yourself? I doubt it."

He glared. "Try it."

He clearly intended for that to be the end of the conversation. But I wasn't about to let him get away with it. I summoned a spark of sealing power in my palm, pitting it quietly against his grip, and he dropped my hand like it was a hot coal, stifling a hiss, and shot me another glare. I raised my chin, daring him to complain, and he sighed.

"You've picked quite a time to be difficult, Princess."

I arched a slender brow at him. "I could say the same."

"I am _always_ difficult. Don't pretend you didn't know that."

His voice was gravel, but his words brought a small, sympathetic smile to my face. The truth was the others weren't making it easy on him. And regardless of the complications that existed between us, I was the closest thing he had to a friend. I admitted, offering him the softer expression, "I did know that."

He examined my smile for a half-second and scowled.

We marched until sunset, around Salari Hill and beneath the bulky, staggered shelves of Lindor's Brow, over the swathe of North Hyrule Plain that overlooked the castle, looming in the distance as a quiet reminder of everything we stood to lose. We followed the road down into the Breach, where nothing grew, and where the cliffs jutted out like fat, grasping fingers overhead and the gaps suggested two misaligned rows of teeth that couldn't quite knit shut. The cover made it an ideal place to spend the night, but Link wasn't having it. He kept us moving until the road rejoined the fields.

He seemed to breathe easier under the open sky.

We pulled off the road and put the Scablands at our backs and set up camp in the plains sprawling in the shadow of Satori Mountain. I started an effortless fire, lost in my own thoughts, and it wasn't until I looked up and noticed the others staring that I remembered they still didn't expect that sort of ability from me. The only person who did had wandered off, preferring a bit of isolation to the antagonism of the group.

The Champions quickly saw to my needs, fixing a simple meal of fish from the river and scavenged herbs, and making sure I rehydrated, and finally relaxing enough to engage in some casual conversation. They managed to make me laugh, even if quietly. Urbosa helped me untangle the week's worth of knots in my hair.

When she was finished and I could turn around again, I realized Mipha was missing. I scanned the darkness and spotted her well outside the ring of the fire, her silhouette muted by the night and crouched beside the Calamity's. They must have been speaking—I couldn't imagine Link would tolerate her presence for long if she didn't have something to say—but the distance, the rhythmic gurgle of the nearby river, and the crackling fire made it impossible to eavesdrop.

"What do you suppose that's all about?" Revali murmured, the disdain in his voice tempered by something else, something trapped between uncertainty and scorn, and I couldn't find the words to answer.

Mipha's shadow moved, both hands moving to cup his face, and a gentle glow emanated from them, splashing them both in pale blue light. His eyes were closed, and I turned my back on the scene, trying to beat down a hollowness rising beneath my ribs that I couldn't name.

I whispered, "It's probably nothing."

With the fire still roaring, I rolled onto my shoulder and tried to sleep. I was afraid of dreaming, of being plagued by nightmares where we couldn't reach the shrine in time and he transformed into some ravenous beast, or of being trapped in memories too intimate and painful to bear. I was just as afraid of staying awake, where the sudden discontent in my chest was churning my thoughts into a tumult.

When I finally slipped under, I was tormented by nightmares and memories in equal measure.

I stirred awake in the middle of the night, swept by a chill that belied the warm embers glowing beside me, and realized Link's unmistakable presence was missing.

I pushed myself up on my arms. Mipha was asleep—or rather put to sleep, a coppery, milky taste lifting from her supple form like a hazy aura. I closed my eyes and sent a pulse in all directions, feeling. He wasn't far, ricocheting back as a thrum of bright shadow among the dull light of a smattering of oaks near where the prairie gave way to the Breach, where the earth tipped up in shelves as though something had burst out of it. I pursed my lips, torn, and then pulled myself away from the fire.

I moved towards the silhouette in my mind, through prairie grass and boulders and cold night wind, until I came upon the trees dappling the plains like sentinels. Link's figure was little more than a blotch of deeper shadow standing among them, the hilt of his sword and the small, silver-blue hoops in his ears catching the scant moonlight. But he didn't turn to acknowledge me as I closed the distance between us, or give any indication that he sensed my approach at all, and that glaring lapse made my stomach twist.

Soon I was close enough to make him out. He was bent, one hand braced against a mottled tree trunk and the other holding his ribs as though he were holding a wound. For a moment he was so still he seemed to have shed his body and left it there to become part of the wilds—unmoving, ever watching, eaten by ivy and wildflowers and bleached by moonlight. I waited, listening for whispers or breath. Then his face turned down, a haggard sound shuddering noisily out of him, lips falling apart as he panted, and I took a hesitant step forward.

His eyes sprang open, coils flaming as they found me, and he sneered, his gravel voice lacking its usual bite, "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," I admitted, narrowing my eyes in a feeble attempt to make him out better as I approached. His silhouette didn't get any brighter for lack of distance. If anything, he seemed to grow darker, less clear, fading further into shadow. His eyes disappeared again, their glow vanishing with a turn of his head, and suddenly he seemed even farther away than before.

His hand dug deeper into his side for a long, breathless moment, and then he gulped air and growled, " _Go away_."

I did the opposite—which shouldn't have surprised either of us, really—drawn in by that harsh snap of anger that should have sent me running. A quick assessment revealed what I had already begun to suspect: the sheen of sweat on his forehead, his shallow breaths, the muscles seizing in his neck and face as he tried to school his expression—all telltale signs of a pain he couldn't quite mask.

"Link," I insisted—or pleaded, or demanded, or begged, hardly aware of my own voice, of its gentle warble on his name—"tell me what's wrong."

"It's nothing I can't deal with _alone_ ," he snarled, turning to face me squarely as his patience waned, the simple gesture making him seem that much more dangerous. "Now _sleep_."

Magic dragged itself across my mind like a curtain, a worn, familiar conjuring he had used so many times before, and my legs buckled. But I pushed back with the last precious flutterings of consciousness, catching myself woozily on an oak between us as I breached the frothy surface of the spell, and he frowned, quickly summoning it over me again like the crash of a wave.

"Stop it," I gasped, breathlessly breaking through the tumult a second time. "And yes, I'm invoking your oath!"

He turned, resigned, his face suddenly wan and lined with exhaustion, and backed against the tree again, puffing a humorless laugh as he slid towards its base. "Well. At least you're admitting it."

I breathed deep, willing the numb tingle of the magic away as he settled where he had landed, eyes closed and arm braced again across his middle. I left the security of my support unsteadily, kneeling beside him with all the surety of a baby fawn.

"Now, are you going to tell me what's wrong of your own volition," I panted, my vision finally beginning to clear, "or do I have to order it out of you?"

He opened one eye halfway to glare at me, and then sighed, shifting gingerly. "I'd forgotten this."

"What?"

"That swearing yourself to a woman is hell."

My mouth twisted, nearly put off. But I was nothing if not persistent. "Is it an injury? My healing abilities are nothing next to Mipha's, but I can at least—"

" _Just—_ " he broke off suddenly, spine arching and teeth clenching as he rode another swell of pain to its breathless end. " _Gods._ Just leave it alone, Zelda."

I stared at him helplessly, loathe to use his oath against him again and balking at the absurdity of simply leaving him there to suffer. I slid off my ankles, slouching as I resigned myself to battling his stubbornness all night. I tried miserably, hopelessly, my voice little more than a whisper, "Please?"

And then, against all odds, he sighed, eyes moving grudgingly to stare through the silky carpet of wildflowers in as plain a show of acquiescence as I had ever seen. He took a single, hesitant breath, wrestling with the final vestiges of his own obstinance, before he murmured, so quietly,

"You asked me once if I needed to eat."

I stared, my body alight with pins and needles as the implication wormed its way into my heart and sat there like a stone. His eyes met mine, full of the same tired, dogged determination they always were. The ever-present hunger glinted there, waiting, gnawing, confirming the truth I felt a fool for not having recognized before.

"Why didn't you…?" I trailed off, realizing it was pointless to ask him why. That it was pointless to expect that, for once, he would do the reasonable thing and try not to bear the burden alone. "You've been starving yourself? This entire time?"

"Don't start that again," he groaned, pulling himself upright with some effort, and I blinked incredulously at him.

"What?"

He gestured vaguely. "With the eyes."

I flickered them down, brow puckering, not entirely sure what that was supposed to mean and unaccountably flustered. Blue and white wildflowers stared back at me.

"It was manageable at first," he murmured, drawing my eyes back with his voice before I could think better of it. "But it just keeps getting worse."

"And you didn't think to mention this until now?" I demanded, grasping after the anger searing a palpable trail in my chest in a desperate move to stave off grief.

"I didn't expect to be alive this long," he reminded me tiredly, and just like that my rage was doused by his utter lack of reprisal.

I frowned, my thoughts realigning, fueling a curiosity that I knew was dangerous.

I asked him slowly, "What do you eat?"

"Life," he murmured, dropping the word like a stone, and a beat of silence grew up around it like a knot of weeds. His lips twitched. "Or perhaps death. I'm not really sure where the nourishment comes from, to be honest. I just know how to get it."

"By destroying it," I whispered, all too aware of the truth, of how that hunger had driven him so many times before, through so many ages, to cause so much ruin.

"Draining that spark of life out of something, watching it turn listless…" his eyes slid to mine, dancing with relish at his imaginary meal. "The temptation is always there. When I see Hyrule, so green and teeming with life… When I see you, just coming into your power, so vibrant it almost hurts to look at you…"

His hand drifted unconsciously as he spoke, reaching for me, his touch so dark I could feel the cold of it drawing the warmth from my chest even though it was still inches away. He faltered, his hand flexing rigidly as he remembered himself, and drew back, and I haltingly remembered to breathe, squelching the thrill of fear I felt like a fiery ember under my boot. No doubt he tasted it. No doubt, by the way his eyes glinted in the dark, it was making his mouth water.

"I experimented with less… unsavoury methods," he continued, shifting again, trying to stay ahead of the discomfort. "Those ancient trees in the grasslands were so old, I thought… Well. They were no substitute."

I scoffed, remembering. "The apple."

"It tasted like hot metal."

Another silence, dense, heavy, thickened the air between us to the consistency of sludge. A swamp of our own creation, sprawling as far as the eye could see in every direction and even less hospitable than Thyphlo had been. My hands fisted on my leggings.

"This is my fault," I decided, swallowing salt, and he tilted his head in a noncommittal gesture.

"If you're referring to the fact that I'm still alive, then yes," he grunted, "I blame you."

He braced his hands on the ground and the tree, shifting his feet beneath himself so he could stand and moving away from the Breach, away from the towering shadows of the Scablands. Moving towards the irreconcilable peace of the prairie grass and wildflowers. The twinkling lights of Hyrule Castle glimmered waxily in the distance, like a spattering of tiny stars cast to the earth and embedded where they struck in the hillside. I sighed, picking myself up to join him languidly; he had his face pressed into the ribbed bark of another lonely oak, enduring another pang of hunger.

He sent me a leaden glance as it passed, panting, and said wryly, "I suppose petitioning you for a mercy killing is out of the question."

I puffed a breathless, humorless laugh, throwing my gaze hopelessly toward the sky. Midnight always seemed bluer on the plains. A swathe of stars hanging over the night mirrored the earthed stars, glistening like lanterns over still water and their reflections.

"Will you make it to the Plateau?"

"I can make it."

I nodded, dreading looking him in the eye when what I was asking of him was so horrible. But I owed him that much. His gaze was soft when I met it, and the guilt in my stomach burned brighter.

"Everything I do is awful," I warbled, smiling suddenly in a paltry effort to mask the tears building in my throat. "Whenever I try to make things right I always end up making them worse."

He smiled too, privately, like it was a secret thing. "It has always been the princess's burden to make difficult choices, and then learn to live with them."

"Has it?" I folded my arms, blotting out a cool wind raking down the mountainside, and pressed my lips into a line. "I honestly don't know if I have it in me."

He watched me a furtive half-second before he turned his attention back to the plains. "You do."

And there it was again, that constancy, that indelible confidence that spread through my chest like the heat of too much wine. It was turning my ears pink and my eyes glassy. It was empowering me when I felt so near the precipice of giving up hope.

I crossed to him in two paces and put my arms around his neck, shivering as that unbearable cold passed right through our clothes and into my bones. But I held him close all the same, pressing my mouth into his shoulder as I blinked back grateful tears. He wasn't reciprocating, which neither surprised nor deterred me much; but where I had expected a scoff of disdain or a dramatic roll of the eyes, he had instead gone so incredibly still I was beginning to worry he had turned to stone.

I pulled back slowly, afraid I had crossed a line. His eyes were hard, searching mine with an amalgam of incredulity and no little disapproval.

"Sorry," I whispered, though I wasn't entirely sure why.

He finally murmured, still holding my shoulders gently as though to keep me at bay, "That had better have been motivated by guilt."

I blinked. "What? No. It was—I don't know. I was grateful."

"Grateful?" he demanded, and the sudden anger in his voice put me on edge. "What in all the realms could you possibly be grateful to me for?"

He spat the words like an accusation, and it made my cheeks heat.

"Are you really going to start an argument? Now? Over this, of all things?"

"If you had _any_ sense at all—!" He stumbled back, bracing himself on the oak and clutching his ribs, and roared in frustration out of clenched teeth as the hunger seared through him again. He fixed me in his fiery gaze as it passed, righting himself crookedly, and panted, "I've plunged Hyrule into darkness too many times to count, eaten her subjects alive, _gorged_ myself on light and blood until there was nothing left, and I'm dangerously close to giving into doing it again. And you're _grateful_?"

"And haven't you saved Hyrule," I argued, frustration blowing caution to the wayside, "just as many times? Haven't you always been my strength, no matter how black the darkness?"

He stared, eyes wide and full of fire.

"And do you consider me your strength now?"

For a moment I was afraid to answer, all too aware of the fury thrashing in his eyes, waiting for an excuse to snap loose. But I was also afraid of letting him drag himself along behind me on account of his oath like some kind of leashed animal, tortured and starving and slowly losing himself, without supporting him in turn; without assuring him that I believed he was worth saving.

"Yes," I said, nearly trembling with how simple it was, "I do."

He was motionless for a breathlessly long time, his body suspended in strange disconnect from his eyes as the wrath tore loose. It was like watching a war unfold, measured in battles waged and won and lost with every beat of his heart. He couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. And then the tension strung between us snapped, and he closed the space to me like lightning, fisting one hand in my hair and whirling. I yelped in surprise and at the sting of pain, but when he pressed against me, trapping me between him and rough bark, the sound died in my throat.

"How many times do I have to teach you this lesson?" he hissed. "How many times do I have to remind you what I am?" He pressed his palm against the side of my face, channeling scalding cold straight into my soul, letting it frost the deepest places there until I thought my breath might mist, and I couldn't stop the strangled cry that fell from my mouth. It struck me then, in the oddest way: how many times before he had touched me like this, trying to burn the sense that he was pure evil into my brain, trying to create a distance he hoped I would be wise enough not to cross. He leaned closer, his cool breath feathering my cheekbone and his fist tightening in my hair. "Stop _pitying_ me."

He was trying to intimidate me, trying to hurt me, and it wasn't that he was failing. It was that, for the first time, I could see beyond it—see the desperation and the fear pulsing beneath the hate, feeding it, engorging it, pushing it until it spiraled out of control.

"I do pity you," I managed, defiant, breathless, and the fury burned brighter.

"And that pity is going to get you killed and your kingdom torn apart," he growled. "You look at me and you want to see something mythical, something forgotten. You want to believe your story has a Hero. But it doesn't."

I gulped a breath, tremoring, and bit out, "The Sword chose you."

"Because it _had_ to. The Hero's Spirit can't be reborn if it's trapped inside this body. Don't you understand that?"

He turned, loosing me so suddenly I had to catch myself against the tree, and ran a hand tensely through his hair. I waited for my pulse to calm and the tingling sensation on my scalp to fade, absently touching my cheek; it had gone completely numb, as though every nerve there had died from the cold and would never feel again.

My thoughts drifted to our connection the night before, when I had let him scour my mind for answers. That experience had been intimate, in a way. I had let him see parts of my mind no one else had ever seen, and that I never would again. I took a hesitant step forward, eyes flitting away uncertainly as I summoned my courage and held out my hand.

"You could show me," I said, the words coming out so quietly I wasn't sure he had heard.

His head ducked, his shoulders going unnaturally still, before he turned to face me again, staring incredulously at my outstretched hand.

"Do you know what you're asking? What that would do to you?"

I swallowed, holding very still. "You want me to understand what you are."

"Not like this," he frowned, and I scowled.

"Because I'm not strong enough?"

"Because you're too pure."

I flushed at my own petulance and at his sudden, earnest counterargument. Of course he would try to protect me. Didn't he always? Even when he was purposefully unkind, even when I had thought he was just being selfish—it always came back to me. But I didn't need his protection anymore. He needed mine.

I steeled myself to follow through with a breath, and nodded. He sighed at me.

And then the second he turned his back again, I closed the space between us, dizzy with intent, threading my fingers across his scalp, and plunged headlong into his mind.

The transition wasn't the warm, honeyed suspension of my own mind. It was dark, a jarring snap of nothingness that snuffed out the world. Finally, the tether went solid, binding us together. At first the impressions were amorphous, translating clumsily into my unpracticed mind: light so hot it burned, dark so cold it ached. Then all at once it sharpened, coming agonizingly into focus, and it was like regaining consciousness on a funeral pyre.

I burned with hatred that couldn't possibly be human, devouring every drop of goodness in my soul like kindling and ravenous for more. The rest was white noise: darkness so blinding I despaired, fury so loud it made my ears bleed, guilt so thick I couldn't breathe, the foul taste of malice reaching so deep in my throat I gagged. The ever-present agony of being ripped in two right down the seam of my spine.

A split second later his hands were closed over my wrists, pulling me out of it, and I heard myself screaming. The contact could barely have lasted the span of a heartbeat. But it had been too intense. Too overwhelming. I couldn't focus on the reality right in front of me. He lowered me to the ground, kneeling with me as I gulped air through panicked tears, and through the fog I heard him calling my name. Finally the sensations started to fade, leaving me trembling noisily and half-blind in his grip.

"There," he growled, when my pupils began to constrict again. "Now you know."

He still sounded breathless himself, his fingers flexing rigidly on my wrists. I searched numbly for his eyes. They were a tumult, furious and depthless as the sea.

He gritted out, voice tremoring, fingers biting down to the bone, "Now _stay out of my head_."

He stood in a sudden flurry of shadow, raking a hand across his scalp as he paced away. I wanted to apologize, wanted to throw myself at his feet and beg for his forgiveness for being so stupid, but I couldn't stop gasping for air long enough to tell him. I tried to close my eyes, but dark and fury and stench still vortexed behind my eyelids.

"What in _Din's name_ were you thinking?" he hissed, turning back slowly, shoulders quaking. His composure was hanging by a thread. "Are you _insane_?"

I sobbed quietly, no more able to answer him than I was able to pull back time and rewrite my own foolishness. My pulse throbbed painfully. I was still reliving the fear, the anger, the pain. It was like a nightmare that wouldn't drain away. And he was in no state to help me through it.

I met his eyes, and in that moment, still drowning in the memory of his mind, I finally believed him.

He was a monster, and I was a fool.

He paced forward, too suddenly, too close, and I panicked.

" _Stop!_ "

I reached out, the goddess breathing to life, shunting power to my fingertips and filling my eyes with light, and touched his mind.

The connection was blinding. My pulse rippled through the weight of an ocean. And then darkness bled into light. The moon turned to rain. Fury turned to breath. The chill in my heart burned off and clung to my skin, turning cool, turning moist, saturating the air until I could taste it. I descended out of the light and into a rainstorm, and a distant rumble of thunder nudged me back into myself as he searched my eyes, soaked bangs dripping rainwater. They were so blue that for a moment I was fooled; but just beneath the surface, submerged in ice, they were ringed in warm haloes the color of honey.

I waited, breath taut, realizing what I had done. Praying he wouldn't. Praying he was fooled. Wondering whose eyes he was seeing. He drifted closer, drawn by warmth, or by memory. So close I could feel the heat passing between us, a gentle fire that couldn't be put out by the storm.

Another crackle of thunder sounded on the horizon. And then, barely audible over the constant patter of the rain, he murmured, "So much for your word."

My expression fell as he exposed me, as he exposed the lie—as ephemeral and tenuous as our misting breath. Conflict raged in his eyes, another war—of disappointment, and regret, and something else, a desire I couldn't quite place that was slowly crowding out the rest. He reached to cup my face, his touch full of all the warmth and tenderness an ancient part of me remembered.

And then the desire won out, and he crushed his lips against mine.


	10. Puzzles

I gasped against his mouth as he pulled me close, his hand threaded behind my neck and through my hair to draw me deeper. He tasted like rain. His touch was lightning and his breath was wind. It was like being in the arms of a storm. And it was so painfully familiar it made tears bud in my eyes.

I didn't pull away, even as his hands closed too tightly where he held me, even as some half-lucid part of me whispered that I should. I was caught up in savoring that taste, the gentle electricity of it, startlingly new and overwhelmingly old at once. I wanted to remember it. I wanted the memory of it to be _mine_ , and not borrowed. I wanted to believe that he wasn't imagining he was holding someone else.

So I let myself believe. I rolled closer, sighing, yielding to the muscle memory that bubble so easily to the surface. Yielding to the urge to let him surround me and bury myself in the safety that came with knowing nothing on earth could possibly breach a tempest as violent as he was. He felt it. He pressed closer, angled higher, deepened the kiss, and I answered him—tentatively at first, my mouth moving in hesitant tandem with his like a question, and then more boldly as he met me again and again, encouraging the friction. The world was tipping off its axis around me, caught up in the same storm that I was and capsizing faster than I could react. My hands found his arms, threaded at the nape of his neck, searching for purchase like he was the only thing keeping me from falling off the edge into a void.

I whispered his name, brokenly, breathlessly, and the lightning shifted in eager response, jolting through my lips and aching down my spine, pulling me in closer by the waist until I was melted against him, and his answering sound, low, impatient, hungry, made stars dance behind my eyes. I couldn't tell him apart from the storm anymore. He was everything and he was everywhere, cold on my skin and warm through my clothes and decadent in my mouth. And it was nowhere near enough.

Then he broke away so suddenly I felt tossed off a precipice, his hands biting into my arms, and his growl was a roll of thunder that I felt in my bones.

" _Stop_."

The illusion splintered in a painful ricochet of light and magic. We were back in the prairie, trembling and panting as though we had actually done what had just played out in our minds. He was staring rigidly through grass and wildflowers, shoulders heaving, and when he finally dragged his eyes up to mine they burned so hot I thought I could feel the breath of a forge. I searched numbly for words—for a way out of the stalemate, to retreat, or to advance. I opened my mouth to try.

His sleep spell crashed over me so hard that I hit the bottom of the ocean and bounced.

I dreamed in memories and suffocating dark and screams. I dreamed of the taste of rainwater, and of the taste of malice. I dreamed of eyes the color of Naydra's Scale, and then of eyes full of ember and ash. I dreamed that his lips were pressed to my neck, and then that his teeth were tearing into it.

I woke again back at camp. Warm tendrils of morning light were beating down my neck, whispering that I had missed dawn. I could feel the amber pulse of Urbosa's presence, the flickering ember of Daruk's, the cool, windswept edge of Revali's, all throbbing reassuringly in my mind's eye. Mipha was a stone's throw away, all aqueous and crimson. She was perched like a sentinel on the crest of the hill. Beyond her, the Calamity pulsed black and amethyst, surveying the path snaking towards the Plateau.

I sat up too fast, wincing as my head throbbed. That spell had been a little extra potent.

"You're awake," Urbosa said.

Suddenly I regretted making that known so quickly, but it could hardly be helped now. I went to say "good morning," but all that slipped out was an unintelligible groan. Revali was examining the fletching peeking out of his quiver, and Daruk was staring off into the distance, where the peak of Mount Hylia and the steeple of the Temple of Time were just visible through the morning haze. I squinted at her in the blurred light. She was prodding at something over the fire. I could smell it now. Endura shrooms. She slid a bowl of red-yellow caps and broth into my hands and pushed it up to my face so I could inhale the steam.

"Drink this," she ordered grimly, and my stomach gave an unpleasant twist as I eyed her frown.

Endura broth was an ancient remedy for headaches.

"How much did he tell you?"

"Not much," she breathed. "Just that we wouldn't be able to wake you, and that your head would be pounding when you came around."

I sipped the soup rather than try to conjure an answer. It was so hot it burned my tongue. But enduring that was preferable to meeting the disapproving look I could feel her leveling at the side of my head. The silence threatened to taper, and I took another drink in a paltry attempt to prolong it. She sighed in that condemning way she often did when, impelled by attachment and the knowledge that there was no one else to do it, she was thrust into the role of prying mother.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?"

"It was my fault," I insisted as a necessary prelude, and her jaw spasmed, eyes flickering skyward as though imploring the gods. I thought I caught the tail end of a Gerudo prayer slip out with her breath.

"How is it that you can have all your mother's wisdom," she sighed, dismantling the little cookery, pulling the cauldron off the makeshift tripod and knocking the legs into the remnants of the fire with undeserved focus, "and none of her good sense?"

"You don't know the whole story," I murmured. "You're so determined to blame him you don't stop to consider that I might've done something to deserve it."

The cooking pot met the firestones with a crack, making me jump and my headache flare. She snapped her head around at the others, who had started, too, their eyes wide. "Boys, make yourselves scarce."

Revali held up his wings in surrender and got to his feet. Daruk didn't bother trying to appease her with a gesture; he was just clambering out of the way of her wrath as fast as his burly shape allowed.

That I could escape her clutches so easily.

"There is _nothing_ that would excuse him putting you under a spell," she hissed. "Do you understand?"

"It was just a sleep spell," I sighed. "It's not as though he hasn't done that before."

She tilted her head at me, her expression a strange hybrid of dismay and confusion. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Urbosa, it's _complicated_ —"

"I see the way you look at him," she said, barreling through my attempts to stonewall her. Her eyes glinted that ethereal foxfire that whispered of gifts bestowed by the desert, of the incredible sight that had belonged to one of the heroines, tied to the fiercest attribute of all: knowledge. It made my skin flush.

I stammered, reddening and at a loss, "I don't know what you mean."

She raised a skeptical brow, sighing again, and stuffed the cooking pot into her pack. I retreated back into my soup, hoping my apparent aversion to this conversation would deter her. It was a very flimsy, very desperate hope.

"I've seen more than my fair share of voe like him," she murmured, smothering the embers of the cookfire with a layer of dirt. "He tries to control you because he doesn't know how to control himself."

I thought back to the firestorm of his mind while she dusted off her hands, the chaos that still clung to the memory and coated my mouth when it bubbled to the surface. I whispered, "He's hardly a man at all anymore. But he is trying. He's doing the best he can."

"And we're all grateful for that." Then she stopped, put her hand on my cheek so I would look her in the eye, her touch gentle and firm at once. "But maybe his best just isn't good enough."

I swallowed. "It's not his fault."

"I'm not looking to judge him. Hylia can do that herself. But I am trying to protect you."

She frowned when I had nothing to say, her eyes probing my unsettled expression for signs she had gotten through to me, and then held her hand out for the bowl. I downed the broth, and she put away the last of the cookware and closed the ties on her satchel.

She handed me a flagon as we abandoned the campsite and moved to join the others. Revali and Daruk had met up with Mipha, still perched on the crest of the hill overlooking the slope. The Calamity was pacing the road where it weaved between the Eleven Rings and became Jeddo Bridge like an animal tracing the boundary of its confinement, his eyes fixed on the grayed silhouette of the Plateau in the distance.

He turned as I set off down the hill, sensing my approach, watching me descend with a glare that could turn a chu to stone. The accusation in that look was unchallengeable, and unmistakable; but I sensed he was as much tethered to my eyes as I was to his, both of us looking for answers where there were none to be found. Asking questions that ricocheted uselessly off our silence. Part of me wanted to brave his fury, wanted to sort out the tangle of bitter feelings slowly swelling between us before it got out of hand.

But then the wind billowed from off the river, raking over us both, and he turned to follow the road before I could say a word, the spell broken.

"He's been like that all morning," Revali scoffed, drawing up beside me, and then glanced over with an expression that was very nearly wry. "I don't suppose you know anything about that?"

He was gone before I could sputter a startled reply, trailed by Mipha and Daruk, until only Urbosa stayed behind with me. She was still frowning, watching me shrink in on myself.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm just tired," I sighed, smiling at her weakly as I set off from the slope, wishing I could believe that was all that was wrong with me. Wishing I didn't feel cornered and crushed and confused beyond reason at the way he had left without so much as a hello. "Thank you for the soup. It helped."

I stepped onto the bridge, desperate to leave the conversation behind, focusing instead on the hollow thud beneath my feet, on the feel of the vibrations emanating from the other end where Daruk's mountainous gait was rattling the planks.

I knew Urbosa meant well, but I had barely had a moment to process everything from the night before for myself.

How could I possibly begin to explain it to someone else?

We trailed down into Nima Plain and veered off the road by unspoken agreement, avoiding Sanidin Park, where we would be more likely to encounter travelers and constantly plagued by a lovely view of both the Castle and the awful scar sprawling at its feet as we traversed the hillside. Nima swept like a great, elongated bowl between Satori Mountain and the Safula Hills. It was all soft grass and wildflowers and rippling winds channeled between the slopes, and not a tree in sight for shade. The morning chill gradually burned off, leaving the sun to heat the basin in earnest. I bunched my hair in my fists and stacked it on the back of my head, trying to ease the prickle of heat and sweat on my neck. Daruk and Urbosa were both used to much hotter climates, and Link's temperature seemed entirely self-regulated, but the rest of us were grateful for the relief of the canopy when the plain emptied into Dalite Forest. The relief of the shade was such a welcome reprieve that I let my guard down, unwittingly meeting his eyes—amber and sapphire, churning with such startling focus that it lit fire to my cheeks.

I quickly averted my gaze, feeling foolish and regretting my carelessness. Gods, but I was a coward. I had faced the Calamity on the battlefield, braved phantasms, commanded a goddess, even looked willingly into the swirling heart of malice itself—and suddenly I could hardly stand the thought of speaking to him. I didn't know if it was his disdain that I feared, or another rejection, or hearing that it had all been a ploy to manipulate me—I would never have been so bold as to name what had moved him to lower his guard with me last night and more, but the notion that it had all been a tactic to spell me made as much sense as any other.

But then, I couldn't help but wonder why he had been looking.

The woods swallowed us easily, Revali muttering some derogatory remark or other about walking when he stumbled on surface roots, and Urbosa laughed so loud it sent birds scattering. We fanned out a bit amidst the trees and outcroppings, chasing shade or the most level bit of path—except Daruk, whose girth made navigating anything other than the middle of the road more effort than it was worth.

We put the Highlands at our back and went down into the gulch that met Manhala Bridge. The great Coliseum at Aquame rose up like a giant to shadow our path, all glittering stone and bulk that seemed to deliberately block a decent view of the Plateau. Clustered together again as we crossed Regencia, the sun tipping off its apex, our collective attention turned to the road ahead—less isolated, speckled with settlements, and riddled with potential disaster.

"What are we going to do about Gatepost Town?" Revali frowned, finally voicing just one of several obstacles quickly approaching.

I considered for a moment, tracing the route that hugged the cliffs and the great, ancient bulwark rising out of them, and the well-traveled road that eventually funneled through the single, narrow channel up into the tableland, where legend said Hylia herself descended from the heavens into the world.

"Can you help with that?" I asked carefully, and his frown deepened.

"There's no getting that Boulder into the air," he gestured, and Daruk flashed him two rows of perfect teeth. "I have my doubts about Urbosa, as well. She's too—"

She glared. "I'm too what?"

"I was going to say _tall_ ," he snarked, and then adjusted his quiver over his shoulder and turned his attention back to me. "I could ferry the rest of you. One at a time."

My thoughts, of course, went to Link's teleportation magic. But it was exhausting for him, and for whoever he pulled along, and I hadn't ever thought to ask if there were limitations on the distance he could travel or the trajectory, or how many people he could move at once. The thought of asking him now made my stomach twist. He was walking ahead of us beside Mipha. Her head turned, affording me a glimpse of her profile and lips moving in a silent suggestion of speech, and he inclined his ear to listen.

I briefly contemplated throwing myself off the bridge, but decided against it when I realized that people I would be trying to escape were the most likely to come to my rescue.

"Then Urbosa and Daruk should go ahead of us," I finally said. "Evacuate the Plateau if they can, or at least tell everyone to stay indoors. I doubt the monks will abandoned the Temple willingly."

Daruk rolled a massive shoulder, his mood brightening at the prospect of a mission. "Don't worry, tiny Princess, we'll handle it. Right, Chief?"

Urbosa was far less enthusiastic about parting ways, but she nodded. "We'll regroup on the Plateau," she said, touching my shoulder gently. "Promise me you'll stay safe. And as for _you_ —" she started, her tenor leaving no room for mistaking who exactly she meant to threaten, but Daruk mercifully interrupted her before she could get going.

"Come on, Chief! We got monks to move!" He barreled towards the end of the bridge, mulling aloud all the way, so apparently thrilled to have something to do that I couldn't help the genuine smile that pulled at my mouth. "Silly, if you ask me. Gods don't live in temples. They live in volcanoes."

"They live in the sands!" Urbosa fired back, letting herself be coerced into a chase, and she passed me one last smirk before she took off after him.

Link and Mipha had already vacated the mouth of the bridge, giving Daruk room to coil, spring, and curl in on himself in midair, hitting the ground with a palpable quake and rolling towards the Plateau with speed that belied his size. Not one to be outdone, Urbosa broke into a sprint in his wake, and I was reminded exactly how few things in all Hyrule could compare to a Gerudo and a Goron moving at full tilt.

"Well, there goes our bulldozer," Revali sighed, crossing his wings, but Mipha turned to smile at him.

"You'll miss him," she said softly, and something about that smile left him scowling in a way that I found entirely suspicious.

Reduced to four and missing our two most boisterous, we snaked tortuously and without conversation behind Aquame Lake and the Coliseum, following, sometimes literally, in the footsteps and trenches left behind by our forerunners. Link kept us moving at a steady pace, and Revali, left without a strong personality to counter his negativity, kept uncharacteristically quiet, opting to scowl at the back of Link's head in lieu of hurling insults.

More than once, hesitation vibrating through her tiny frame like a ripple across a pond, Mipha seemed as though she might break our stubborn silence, her eyes darting thoughtfully to my feet or over her shoulder, but then the moment would pass and I would wonder if I had imagined the whole thing until it eventually happened again.

Finally we put the lake at our backs and reached the funnel that had been etched ages ago between the cragmasses, staring through it into the bulk that was the Plateau's imposing northwest face. The bulwark framing its rim was a glistening white crown in the harsh afternoon light, unscalable and untouchable, as though the goddess herself had carved the boundary for her temple—a symbol of protection for her children, and a warning to her enemies. I frowned, watching Link as I drew up beside him where he had stopped to scan the battlement. Whether he believed it or not, he was both.

Then he said, "Meet us as soon as you can."

And before I could so much as squeak out a warning he took me by the wrist and jumped.

We stepped through a nauseating whirl of sunlight and stone into the shelter of a forest. I stumbled into a tree as we emerged, panting, reaching down, down, into ancient reserves, desperate to counter the exhaustion creeping in the wake of the magic. I couldn't quite scrape together the energy to be furious.

"I still don't understand how teleporting can take s-so much power," I shivered, reaching and reaching and reaching.

"It bends spacetime," he murmured, watching me curiously. "That kind of magic was never meant for mortals in the first place."

"Y-you use it."

"I'm not human," he scoffed. And then, moved by pity or impatience, he stepped closer, reaching out to lend me a warm tendril of energy, his fingers fleetingly brushing my neck and sending heat cascading towards the coldest places, and I couldn't help but start at his touch, meeting his eyes. His hand dropped, leaving me to nurse the ember on my own. "You may be descended from a goddess, but I can't say the same for you."

My stomach clenched and twisted even as my teeth stopped chattering, and I swallowed, forcing myself to let go of the tree so I could face him properly as I worked up the nerve to broach the topic that had been festering between us all morning.

"Link, about last night—"

He growled at me before I could begin, approaching so quickly that I took an instinctive step back, "I'm leading you to the Shrine because I made you a promise. But if you _ever_ touch my mind again, I'll make you wish you hadn't."

He only held my gaze for a moment before he turned to stalk off into the woods, but it had been enough. Enough for me to recognize that unmistakable flint of resolve, that ancient, unending tiredness that tormented him like thirst, and something else, something stormlike and familiar, tossing beneath.

"You're running," I breathed, a realization and an accusation at once.

He paused, bristling or considering, and glanced at me over his shoulder.

"And if you knew you wouldn't be strong enough to protect everything you were fighting to save, you would run, too," he frowned. "Now stay here and wait for the others."

He took another step, eyes lingering too long on mine, and in flicker of apparition and light he was gone.

I sighed, deflated. I didn't have the energy or the ambition to chase him. Untangling whatever this mess was that we had gotten ourselves into was going to have to wait.

I moved into a clearing, clinging to that little tendril of borrowed energy for all I was worth as I waited for the drain to bottom out. It wasn't long before I spotted Revali's shadow arcing over the woods. Mipha was perched on his back, leaning easily over the void beneath them as she scanned the forest with a one gripping his quiver and her spear dangling from the other, as graceful in the buffeting winds as she would have been navigating river currents. I waved them down, following Revali's steep descending spiral to meet them.

He looked mad as a hornet as Mipha dismounted, his feather ruffled and puffed and his beak tugged into a frown, but instead of breaking into a tirade when he caught sight of me, he just sighed.

"He leave you behind, too?"

I scrunched my lips into a tight, transparent mockery of a smile, enduring his answering eye roll without chafing. Mipha drifted closer, her expression far more serious than either of ours.

"Do you know where he's gone?"

"He isn't far," I said, subconsciously sending out a pulse to reassure myself. He was on the ridge, the responding light in my mind tasting of his own magic—muddled, like two ripples meeting and wrinkling before they bounced off each other. I gestured listlessly. "Just there."

"We can round the bend there on the way up and see how the others are fairing while we're at it," he suggested, and then flashed me a sardonic smirk as he led the way. "It's like I said. Terrible fun."

Mipha leaned into her trident, passing me a thoughtful glance as she went after him, quiet as ever. I took a steadying breath as I moved to follow. We were nearly there. This was nearly over. And the rest would sort itself out. I mentally repeated that reassurance to myself like a mantra.

Then Revali piped up, "So when are you going to tell us what was going on with you two last night?"

My eyes went wide as saucers, heart rate spiking and tongue tying in my mouth, until it registered that he wasn't addressing me. Mipha glanced up at him, her diminutive form even more pronounced against his impressive Rito stature, but her eyes glittered with such apparent challenge that it made up for their height difference, making them seem nearly proportional.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I mean the _glowing hands_ while the rest of us were around the fire," he intoned, gesticulating with his wingtips. "Don't tell me you thought you two were being subtle. We all noticed."

"Master Revali," she smiled gently, and the throb of fear in his eyes gave away that he had already lost. "If I didn't know any better, I might think you were jealous."

He sputtered, his crest feathers standing on end. "That's ridiculous!"

Her smile grew, eyes falling back to the uneven ground beneath our feet, and he calmed a little when she didn't seem interested in pressing the assault.

"Ah, I see. You're laughing at me."

"I'm sure any young lady would be happy to have earned your jealousy."

"Tch."

"Truly. Just one smile, if she managed to pry one out of you, would leave a girl utterly—what is it the Rito say?"

"Twitterpated," I offered up helpfully.

"Yes, that's it. Twitterpated."

"All right, you can stop," he sighed. "Goddesses. It was only a question."

We weaved into the copse that overlooked the lesser oratories, watching the trickle of worshippers stream from the complexes towards the well-traveled channel that led off the Plateau. The Temple of Time gleamed like a jewel at the head of the sanctuary, all glistening gray stone and stained glass sentineled above the heartland on a soaring pedestal. Urbosa and Daruk stood at the portico beneath the great bell tower, trying to coerce the last of the faithful out of harm's way. It didn't look like they were winning the argument, if the massive gestures of the man they towered over were any indication.

We slipped away, concealed by the shade of the trees, and snaked around the bend and up the hill, still speckled with the remnants of ancient stairways from a bygone era. The ridge wasn't particularly long, but I was still dragging from our bout of teleporting, and was properly out of breath by the time the slope leveled.

Link was pacing alongside the cliff face as we crested the hill—slowly, his hands pressed to the stone, feeling for something beneath. I quickly deduced that he hadn't yet found what he was looking for and moved to rest my feet, but Revali asked anyway.

"Anything?"

I couldn't hear him sighing or see his eyes rolling, but I could feel him doing both, like a horse can feel a storm looming. His voice was a drone. "Yes. I have the Shrine right here. In my pocket."

Revali's eye roll was much more apparent. He crossed over to where I had set myself down beneath the shade of a cedar tree and Mipha had followed, eyeing the way I had inadvertently latched onto my shoulders with my hands. He pulled his tinderbox out of his pack and handed it to me.

"Everyone is just full of quips today," he murmured, and even though it sounded distinctly like a complaint, I got the impression he almost appreciated it. "I'll go check in with the others."

I nodded, and he hopped off the ledge, angling into the drop until he had enough lift to bank through the treetops and glide back towards the temple. I set the tinderbox down without opening it, not wanting to waste supplies for a fire in the middle of the day; the energy Link had lent me was doing more for the lingering cold than a fire would, anyway.

Mipha crossed her legs beside me and balanced her trident over her knees, sighing softly. In the ensuing silence, I realized we had hardly spoken all morning. She tended to be much quieter than the others, but it was difficult to ignore the nagging feeling that there was more to it than that. I mustered the energy to offer her a small smile, which she returned as gracefully as I expected.

Princesses were good at social niceties like that.

Then she floated a little closer, her head tilting gently in that thoughtful-looking tell that often preceded her soft voice. Her golden eyes lifted to mine, so quiet and observant that it dispelled any surprise that she knew as much as she did.

"I understand why you didn't tell the others about his hunger," she said, her tone breathing discretion. "I'm sure it's exhausting playing diplomat as it is."

I nodded, gripping my arms a little tighter. Trying not to feel seen through. But it was difficult.

"I have to admit I'm surprised that he told you."

"He didn't, exactly. Not of his own volition. But my powers are quite sensitive. I can sense when someone is in pain—see it, almost, like a glow. But his hunger wasn't something I could heal."

I sighed at the memory of it, letting my head drop listlessly onto my shoulder. "That's a shame. But thank you for trying, anyway. I'm surprised he allowed that either, to be honest."

"Well," she sighed. "We all knew what the consequences might have been if he reached his limit. And I… may have threatened to bring it to your attention, if he didn't at least let me try." She smiled. "But whatever you've done seems to be working."

I blinked. "I haven't done anything," I stammered, chancing a glance in his direction.

She looked, too, surprised. She narrowed her gaze slightly, as though doublechecking her assessment. "But he seems so much better…"

I frowned, wondering. "I can't explain that. But it won't matter soon, anyway. Once Link finds the shrine, his hunger won't be an issue."

She nodded, lifting an assenting brow, but clasped clawed hands together. "Assuming he can find it," she hedged softly, "and assuming it works."

Ah, there it was. The reservation I had seen in her the day before, finally coming to light. It prickled on my neck, too hot, too unpleasant, as though the sun were beating on it again.

"I know there's risk involved," I admitted, dredging up the last scraps of royal assuredness I could muster. "And in the end, this might lead to nothing. But we owe it to him to try, after everything he's done."

"He's made great sacrifices," she acknowledged carefully, thoughtfully; then her eyes, all gold and vitreous, tentatively met mine. "I just hope it wasn't for nothing."

And my throat closed, because the implication was clear. She just hoped that I hadn't endangered everything he had worked for with my ridiculous plan. She just hoped that we would be able to enact it before the Calamity broke loose and unleashed hellfire and fury that would swallow the world.

"So do I," I managed, lips numb and tingling, because there was nothing else I could possibly say.

She offered me a small, tight smile that didn't touch her eyes, as the conversation drained irretrievably. And suddenly I wouldn't have minded a little warmth from the sun.

Urbosa, Daruk, and Revali made their way up the hill not long afterwards, looking a little defeated.

"You were right about those monks," Daruk murmured as they joined us. "They're stubborn little things."

"We were able to evacuate most everyone else, and they at least agreed to stay indoors," Urbosa chimed in, crossing her arms. "How are things progressing up here?"

I shrugged, gesturing at Link, as though that was answer enough. When they waited for more, I sighed, getting to my feet. "I'll ask."

"Check his pockets," Revali suggested blithely.

I left them behind, sidling up to where Link still had his hands pressed against the rock without preamble, and waited. The stone was warm on my back. He glanced at me sidelong, and then arched a brow when I didn't bother him in silent invitation. I reached over and flattened my palm against the cliff next to his, feeling. There was stone and stone and stone, and something else, denser than stone, darker than stone, buried at the heart of it.

"It's in there," he murmured, pressing closer, leaning his temple against the rock. Then his mouth tugged into a frown, his eyes sliding hesitantly to mine. "There's something about all this I haven't told you."

My brow fell. I didn't know if I could handle another unpleasant surprise. "What?"

His lips parted to answer, but then he thought better of it, his teeth clicking shut. "It can wait."

"Oh, don't do that," I breathed, rolling to turn my face back to the sun. Basking in its heat. "I'll imagine something worse than the truth."

"You could do with some nightmares."

I breathed a lazy sigh. "Sometimes I wonder if you realize that I'm not your prisoner anymore."

He hummed grimly—or perhaps mockingly. "And sometimes I wonder if you realize that I've been yours from the beginning."

I shifted, looking for his eyes. Looking for answers. He arched an eyebrow at me like I was being obtuse.

"Can we talk about what happened?" I dared to whisper. "Please?"

He considered for half a second before he pushed off the stone and said, "No."

Then he thrust his hands toward the rock with a growl, power rushing out of him like a thrumming bass note, and the wall beside me bowed under the pressure, rippling, and then gave. The rock crumbled and blasted away, revealing a smooth-walled tunnel descending into the Plateau. He stepped into the cavern as the dust settled, turning back to offer me his hand.

I took it slowly, letting him lead me into the depths, pushing down an unwanted swell of feeling when he gave my fingers a gentle squeeze.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I could have done with some nightmares.


	11. The Shrine

The rock gave way to something else just beyond the lip of the cavern, a material I recognized from borrowed memory but had no name for. The mouth of the shrine. It was cool to the touch and perfectly smooth, forming a passage that descended beneath the tableland—a passage and _stairs_ , covered in debris and dust from the path Link had blasted through 10,000 years worth of accumulated earth and stone, but otherwise undamaged. Tiny orange orbs embedded in the walls peeked through the shadows at the angles where rigid, clay-colored lines met, strung up on them like stars on constellations.

Daruk had to crouch to get his head into the tunnel, but it was wide enough for him so long as he didn't try to walk abreast anyone else. He took up the rear as the other Champions filed in behind us, shuffling noisily; he reached out to stroke the foreign surface once, grimaced at the silky texture, and now seemed intent on not having any contact with it at all. Revali shushed him once, but then seemed to realize it was as pointless as shushing an avalanche and gave up.

The descent leveled at a dead end. The wall where the passage ended was easily twice my height, and littered in emblems and snaking designs that were dizzyingly familiar. At its center, a Sheikah eye watched over the passage like a guardian, stationed there millennia ago and still at its forgotten post.

Link scanned the floor surrounding the obstruction and frowned, his expression turning disquiet. He whispered something as he reached out to touch the wall, something ancient. I vaguely recognized it as an archaic form of Hylian, rummaging through memory, through pieces of linguistics studies and half-remembered history lessons, grasping after a translation. The answer bubbled up from someplace much deeper, so untraceable I doubted its legitimacy. _Forgive us_.

He stepped back and curved his hands, gesturing forward, and then to the sides, and then upward, miming lifting something heavy. The tunnel shuddered, ancient mechanisms resisting his efforts, but with each movement pieces of the wall shifted. The eye shunted forward on one side and back on the other, releasing a lock beneath that swiveled open and then parted, and finally the massive columns that made up the bulk of the wall pulled from the floor and sank into the ceiling.

Link stepped into the antechamber, plowing forward where the rest of us hesitated. It was startlingly well preserved. More serpentine, clay-colored patterns spread up pillars at the room's extremities and littered the floor and molding, leading up a ramp that served as the centerpiece to yet another doorway. Sconces on the flanking walls bathed the hall in a soft blue glow, and a squat pedestal just beside the entry gleamed a contrasting amber, its face emblazoned with different sort of constellation—orange and circular, surrounding a single azure ring that stared yawningly at whoever dared approach. It struck me as a flat, lifeless mimicry of his eyes.

"Incredible," Mipha whispered, and Revali scowled.

Daruk still looked nervous, his great stony feet rolling beneath him like he couldn't get his toes to grip the floor. "Doesn't feel natural."

Standing at the landing atop the ramp, his arms crossed over his chest, Link loosed a frustrated sigh, and I left the others behind to drift closer.

"What is it?" I murmured warily.

"I can't force this door open like I did the other one."

"Oh," I breathed, at a loss. "Couldn't you just teleport us through?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't work that way."

"You said it bends spacetime," I recited.

He turned to glare at me, finally out of patience. "And the Shrines house extradimensional pockets of subspace. They're gateways. If we tried teleporting beyond this wall without activating it, we would just materialize inside solid rock. Understand?"

I didn't. But I nodded anyway. I touched the wall, reaching to confirm his claims. He was right. There was nothing beyond it but a pocket of stale air and more stone.

"It doesn't give off any heat," Urbosa mused, holding her hand up to one of the sconces, and then tapped at the iris on the pedestal. "How does this even work?"

"Most of it is powered by the Ichor," Link answered pensively, and when we all turned to blink at him owlishly, he puffed another impatient sigh. "It's an ancient energy source—a liquid harvested from reservoirs deep within Hyrule. Its power is…" he gestured pithily, grasping after the right word and not looking like he'd found it, "unfathomable. Only limited by our ability to harness it. Some say it's blood of the gods themselves."

Then he stopped, turning to look at me slowly in a way that had me taking a preemptive step backwards.

He tilted his head, considering. "Do you suppose it might respond to the real thing?"

He took my wrist before I could retreat, dragging me over to the pedestal over my squeaked objection, and put the terminal between us, holding my hand over the iris and stars. Then he pulled the hilt from his belt, and the Champions surged closer in collective protest when the blade ignited the same blue as the sconces.

Link sighed exasperatedly. "I just need a _drop_."

"It's not the _amount_ I object to," Urbosa growled. "And even if I were fine with that, I have other concerns. I wouldn't put it past you to enjoy drawing a bit of blood."

He glared at her. "Do you want to be the one to do it?"

"It's fine, Urbosa," I said, not entirely sure I believed that but in a hurry to deescalate the situation. I took a breath and met his eyes. "Go on."

I braced myself, and before Urbosa could so much as breathe an objection he had sliced my palm clean open in one swift stroke. I bit back a cry, swallowing the urge to scream at him that this was definitely more than a drop as the wound oozed red. He turned my hand over, squeezing gently to urge the flow—not that it needed any urging—and I worked to school my expression as the stream trickled onto the face of the pedestal, hyperaware of the reflexive crackle of electricity sparking on Urbosa's fingertips. He turned my hand upright again when he was satisfied, drawing the pad of his thumb across the wound. It sealed painlessly, and I loosed a tense, stale breath.

"You see?" he said, eyes brimming with unexpected, quiet accusation that made breath stick in my throat. "No harm done."

Then the pedestal between us hummed, the amber constellation igniting blue to match the iris, and sang a chime that reverberated through the hall. The passage rumbled, dust dislodging from the seams as the columns shifted and then slid open, revealing a larger chamber. My heart sputtered, pushing me closer, but I tore my eyes away from the glow pouring through the shadows to gauge his expression. His eyes were still trained on me.

He murmured, "You must not be so mortal as I thought."

Mipha abandoned the standoff first, trotting up the ramp to peer beyond the threshold, and the rest of us disengaged in disjointed tandem, moving to follow.

The room was cavernous and gloomy, the air thick with dust and haze. At its center, a vat was enshrined beneath a tangle of modules suspended from the ceiling, casting off soft light. Urbosa gave an impressed whistle, and Link moved to inspect it, frowning. He crouched beside the pool and pried open a long panel running along its side, revealing a tangle of lights.

"It's hard to believe something like this has been buried for so long," she mused. "Makes you wonder what else is waiting to be discovered out there."

Revali hummed, still skeptical. "Don't get too excited. We're not even sure it still works."

"It's—" Daruk gestured vaguely, and then gave up and shrugged. "—glowing. That's gotta be a good sign."

But Link still hadn't said anything, even when the others ran out of observations. I swallowed my disappointment, my fears, the sudden claustrophobia at the prospect of yet another dead end and its consequences. I took a few cautious steps closer, hovering.

"The power source is depleted," he finally murmured. "Or it might not have ever been finished in the first place. It's running on emergency reserves. A single core."

"Can you fix it?" asked Mipha.

He frowned, dropping the word like a stone. "No."

Revali crossed his wings. "That's it then? We came all this way for nothing?"

I knelt next to him, staring into the strange snarl of azure and amber, opening my mind to suggestion, willing answers to the surface. But I couldn't make head nor tail of it. It did feel familiar, horribly so, but there was nothing tangible in it, nothing useful. If anything, it felt more like the device recognized _me_.

I sighed. "Is there really nothing you can do? Can't you just…?" I wiggled my fingers in a pithy suggestion of powers beyond mortal reckoning.

That pulled a small, reluctant smirk out of him. "You can't solve everything with magic."

"It seems to be how you tackle most of your problems," Urbosa breathed, still put out. He ignored her.

"I don't have an Interface, or a way to harvest more Ichor. Even if I did, I'm not familiar with this design." He frowned, thinking, and sighed, "The only one who might know what to do with it is a Sheikah."

"Sheikah," I repeated, the gears in my head turning rapidly, and he gave me an odd look.

"They were a shadow tribe who served—"

"I know who they are," I interrupted, mirroring his odd expression back at him.

Revali sighed dramatically. "Don't tell me you're going to drag us all to Kakariko."

"It's not far," Daruk mused. "We could be there before dark if we were quick about it."

"It's not the _distance_ I object to. It's the endless twists and turns that are quickly turning this lofty quest of ours into a colossal waste of time!"

But Link's jaw set as they argued, something fearsome flickering through those storm-ravaged eyes.

"Are you?" he asked me, so quietly the others would be hard pressed to hear.

"Am I what?"

"Going to insist we go to Kakariko?"

I pursed my lips, whispered, "Would you come?"

He arched a tired brow at me. "Do I have a choice?"

Behind us, Urbosa had let herself get dragged into the debate—initially only as a referee, it sounded like, but had since graduated to putting Revali and his bad attitude in their place.

"Please," I entreated him gently. "Daruk is right. We can be there in a few hours."

"And when the Sheikah don't have the answers you want?" he growled. "Then what?"

I sighed, dreading his inevitable rebuttal. "Then I'll do what you ask."

"That's what you said about the Shrine. And Thyphlo Ruins before that."

"I know. I know I did. But I didn't _know_ —"

"Oh _please_ ," Revali horned in, scoffing. "Don't let him bully you, Princess. He obviously wants a tidy solution for himself as much as you do. Otherwise he would have plunged that sword into his chest long ago and forced your hand. You could hardly stand by and let the Calamity claw its way out without intervening like he says he wants." He glanced skyward, as though struck. "In fact, if he _really_ had Hyrule's best interests at heart—"

"Stop speaking," Link interrupted with an understated wave of his hand, and suddenly Revali was choking on words that wouldn't come loose, flustered and confused and furious—

And curiously, pleasantly silent.

Urbosa raised an eyebrow at him. "You could have done that this whole time?"

Mipha moved to inspect his throat, but it was more of a formality than anything else. She couldn't repair damage that wasn't really there. I pressed my lips into a line, hoping I could get him to agree before he let himself be goaded into something stupid.

But Revali wasn't exactly wrong, was he?

"Give me until tomorrow to find a solution," I said, shoving his accusations aside. "One more day."

"Nightfall," he countered, so cuttingly I reflexively swallowed the argument that wanted to bubble up in my throat. "And goddesses help you if you go back on your word again."

My stomach twisted, my thoughts involuntarily drifting toward where his allowance-turned-ultimatum would end: with answers that would save his life, or with his blood on my hands.

"I won't," I sighed, getting to my feet. But even I was getting tired of making promises I wasn't sure I could keep. I tucked my arms into each other and made for the tunnel, my stomach sinking as I abandoned the Shrine, and hope with it, carefully avoiding eye contact with Revali—or Link, or any of them. "Let's get a move on. We have a lot of ground to cover."

Link replaced the panel without ceremony, turning to leave the device and the cavernous room that housed it behind, and I strained to hear Mipha's inquiry as she fell in step with him.

"What makes you think the Sheikah will know what to do?"

"They were the shrine-builders," he murmured, "and they have a long memory."

 _How long?_ I wondered. Could they possibly remember building what the rest of the world had forgotten? Reason told me their shrines and beasts couldn't have been more than a blip in their collective memory, a smattering of patterns on a tapestry that hinted at a buried past. But I had to hope there would be more: that they would remember beyond form, beyond fuel, into how they had actually _worked_. Enough that they could repair what Link had found.

But if they could remember all that, would they remember what I had done, as well? The thought made my feet heavier, made my stomach twist. But I couldn't change the past. Only try to make up for it.

We climbed out of the shrine into daylight. Behind me, Link drew an illusion across the entrance like a curtain, shrouding the mouth of the cave in rock. I turned my attention towards the Duelling Peaks and frowned.

"My father has an advisor—a young Sheikah historian," I schemed aloud. "If anyone could help us find the answers we're looking for, she would."

Urbosa hummed in agreement. "We just need a way to get a message to the castle."

"How about courier pigeon?" Link suggested, smiling wickedly, and Revali shot him a withering look that said plenty in spite of his condition.

"He can hardly deliver a message if he can't speak," I pointed out.

He met my eyes, that swirl of azure and amber almost aflame in the sunlight. "It's temporary."

Urbosa planted a hand on her hip, sending Revali a wry smirk. "Pity."

I turned, asked him more quietly, "Would you?"

He opened his beak, the expression on his face betraying the start of a self-indulgent tirade, but then his feathers puffed and his eyes rolled at his involuntary silence, and he gave me a curt nod. He whipped away from us with an astounding amount of dignity, kneeling to beat his wingtips against the earth.

"Revali," Mipha said, and her soft, unexpected voice was enough to pull his attention. He met her eyes over his shoulder and she urged him, "Be swift."

He nodded grimly before calling up a gale as if from nothing, riding its currents skyward in sudden billow of cyclone that left the rest of us windswept. His wings spread to catch the last dregs of lift, and then he tore across the sky headed north.

"That takes care of that problem," Urbosa mused, with wry, purposeful ambiguity, and then passed her glistering gaze over Link. "Now what are we going to do about this one?"

"She's right," Daruk said, leathery lips twisting. "There's more people between us and Kakariko than there were between us and the Plateau this morning."

"They'll teleport," Mipha said simply, in that soft, startling voice, and set off without waiting for confirmation, using her trident like a walking stick.

Daruk followed, glancing back nervously like an unsure puppy pulled along on a leash, but Urbosa stayed rooted to the spot, crossing her arms. She turned those fearsome eyes on me.

"Teleport? Just the two of you?"

"You won't be far behind," I reasoned, trying on one of her daring smirks for size as convincingly as I could. "I can handle him for that long."

She sighed, stomping down maternal instincts and violent reprisals and who knew what else. Mipha and Daruk were already halfway down the hillside, his big head still swiveling worriedly.

"We need to have another talk," she finally said. "A long one."

"In Kakariko," I promised, more than happy to have an excuse to put that off, and turned to face the Calamity. "Ready?"

He offered me his hand. "Can you handle another jump?"

"Can you?" I countered, taking it.

"That depends," he breathed wearily. "Are you going to behave yourself?"

I frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

And then the Plateau whisked out from under us, moss-green and stone-gray and aqua-blue blurring and stretching and bending, and then giving way to a jarring, slick bank of sand and stone and the chilly cover of shadow as we emerged in the shade of the crags, moist from the spray of the river.

I plunged mindlessly towards power, reaching deep into buried reservoirs to counter the ill effects that rushed up in the wake of the jump. I dredged up enough to keep them at bay, standing very still and holding very tight. I slowly opened my eyes, wary of the vertigo. But it never came.

My hands were clinging to his arms, and his hands were holding me aloft at the elbows. My skin was glowing radiant gold. I pinched my eyes closed again.

"Zelda."

I couldn't answer him. I was afraid. Afraid that if I opened my mouth golden light would pour out and level half of Necluda. Afraid that if I dared to breathe I would inhale the sky and the sun and the moon and leave the world in darkness. Afraid that if I tried to take a step closer both my feet would leave the ground, and I would spiral out of reach and towards some kind of fearsome divinity, when all I wanted was to stay here, and stay Hylian, and stay _Zelda_.

"Look at me."

I dared to open my eyes again, biting down to keep my jaw still. But he wasn't afraid. Not at all. He looked like he'd seen this light burning out of me a thousand times before. And he probably had.

"That's enough," he murmured.

I loosed a breath held too long. My shoulders sagged, and the light faded, receding back into secret places so bright it hurt to look at them. I let go of his arms, clenching my fists awkwardly in the air above them, and swallowed.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"You overcompensated," he said, his voice still low, calming, like he knew too loud a noise might send me searing back into lightning, and then reached, mouth twisting gently, to tuck an unruly lock of hair behind my ear. "Like you always do."

I whispered again, trembling, "Sorry. Let me just—"

I meandered to the water's edge and sat down, reaching to touch the river's chilly surface, and then peeled off my boots in a sudden, adrenaline-driven fury to dip my feet in. The coolness washed away the last of the glow I could feel burning just under my skin, and when I followed where I thought it must have gone I found something like it reflecting in diamonds where the sun struck the water. I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my head.

"You'll never learn to control that power if you're terrified of it."

I pursed my lips, propping my elbows against my knees and sinking into my wrists. "I should be terrified of it," I muttered, "considering what the last princess who used it did to you with it."

He sighed, the sound pouring out of some unadulterated place in his soul, some _human_ place. He moved, stepping into the shallows so I couldn't avoid his eyes anymore, and knelt at my feet on the shore.

"You can't be afraid of that, Zelda," he insisted, eyes torn between fury and something much more gentle, something desperate and tired. "You can't. Your power exists for one reason: to counter something much worse. Whatever you might do—whatever you might _have_ to do—will pale in comparison to what I'll end up doing if you don't stop me. I don't _want_ —"

He stopped, the muscles in his face jumping rigidly to catch a slip, and I felt thrown back to the night before, when the armor fell away and left me alone with a trembling, deformed creature of light and shadow, splitting at the seams and trying to hold on for one more night, one more hour, one more breath. He closed his eyes, opened them again slowly, like it would swallow down whatever was trying to burst out of him.

"I don't want to be a monster," he said. "I don't want to destroy you. But that's exactly what will come to pass if you let it. Believe me when I say that whatever crimes you have to commit to keep that from happening will be a mercy."

I nodded minutely, jerkily, my fingers itching with the phantom sensation of his splintered soul threaded and strung taught on a needle.

"Maybe the Sheikah can save us both," I hoped quietly. "I don't want to destroy you, either."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But we're running out of daylight to find out."

I bobbed another nod, reaching with a sigh towards my boots and dreading shoving wet, sandy feet inside. "Right. We should move on."

I stared at the dark void inside my shoes for a half-second before I decided to forgo them entirely. I got to my feet, my boots dangling from one hand by the laces, and started down the riverbank barefoot. He was leveling a disapproving glare at my ankles.

"You didn't think there were any Sheikah left," I prompted before he could scold me for my childishness, and he grunted a pithy agreement.

"You didn't have a Sheikah Champion. When we found the Shrine locked up and buried, I thought they had been forced to run. I thought they had been blamed."

I saw their civilization rise and fall with the centuries like a dream between the grains of sand: towers and shimmering stalactite stones and shrines, heat wafting off forges burning with azure fires, flickers of terrible beasts glowing with Ichor and warriors pounding across Hyrule on clawed, kinematically redundant arms, and an image, much more crisp, of a man standing at a forgotten doorway, speaking a forgotten tongue, petitioning a dead race for their forgiveness.

"Maybe they did run," I frowned, watching ghosts of great, glowing cities with spires that reached the clouds slip behind my eyes. "Maybe the Sheikah we know are all that's left."

"It wouldn't be the first time," he said, the sand beneath us giving way to stone that was warm on the bottom of my feet. "I've seen the world reborn more times than I can count. Hyrule is always different. Always in flux—rotting and sprouting anew in barely recognizable shapes." He offered me his hand when the rock ended abruptly, helping me take the yawning step back onto the bank, and met my eyes. "The only constant is us."

"And that will end," I mused, frowning, "won't it?"

He smirked gently. "Only for me."

He hadn't dropped my hand, so I didn't drop his. Our fingers tangled as he guided me along, icy and alight and familiar, my toes dipping into the lapping water and padding in the sand. I wondered if he was right. There was a certain logic to it: I was a descendant of a divine being, her blood seeded in my mother and her mother before her. That would only end with the bloodline. But the Calamity was a curse locked in a cycle, and the Hero was a spirit reborn to challenge it. With the one destroyed, would that mean the end of the other?

I didn't care for that rationale at all. It reduced him to little more than a tool. Someone to be used up, and then discarded when he had no use left.

And maybe there was more truth to that than I wanted to believe.

"Are you hungry?" I asked quietly, grazing for distraction. He scoffed.

"Always."

"You seem better," I said, which was a silly observation really. He could barely stand on his own for hunger the night before, and now he was traipsing across Hyrule and casting magic, strong as he had ever been. But I still didn't understand why. And I suspected the answers lay dangerously close to our interactions in that field. He didn't answer. I pushed a little harder. "Mipha said you'd improved."

"Did she?" he droned.

I ignored his insouciance, moving to confront him. Daring to force an issue he seemed intent on circumventing. "Do you have any theories as to why that might be?"

The look he gave me was unmistakable: part frustration, and part knowing, and all warning.

"Does it matter?"

He tried to leave it at that, tried to slough off the topic like a layer of skin and abandon it on the riverbank. But I dug in my heels, letting my toes sink into the sand, heart pounding in my throat, and closed my snarled fingers over his, drawing him to a stop. He turned, glaring, and I swallowed.

"It matters," I whispered.

His jaw set, eyes burning with stubborn, undirected fury, and then he raked his fingers through his hair and growled half-answers between his teeth.

"I don't—I don't know. Maybe it was dreaming again. Like a reminder of what I was, of what I'm trying to hold onto—of what it feels like to be human. Maybe it was—maybe it was you," he admitted, more quietly, and his eyes said the rest.

I wet parched lips, pulse fluttering. "That could be useful. If there's a way to control it—"

"Zelda," he sighed hotly, grasping after patience. "It doesn't matter. If all goes well, I'll be dead in a few hours."

"Stop _willing_ this to fail," I snapped, hurt. "I can't help you if you won't trust me!"

"I _do_ trust you."

"Just not where you're concerned."

"Would you?" he demanded. "You've been inside my head. You know I'm fighting a losing battle."

"Which is exactly why you can't do this alone."

He scowled. "That's where you're wrong. It's exactly why I must."

The river undulated noisily beside us, punctuating the lull as I grasped for words, for reason.

"You keep trying to protect me," I murmured, shaking my head. "But we have to do this together. We're _meant_ to. Calamity in you or no Calamity, we're connected. Can't you feel that?"

"No," he spat, too quickly, to vehemently, and I plunged headlong into his fury.

"Not even last night," I pressed, breathless, "in the dream?"

"Don't ask me that," he growled, jabbing an accusatory finger at me, and it was _that_ voice, the final, unchallengeable word that meant the discussion was over.

He turned again with purpose and I didn't resist, letting him lead me out of shadow and into the heat of the sun beating on the boggy plain. The air was thick with it, summery and moist, like the discontent wrapping around my ribs.

"You can't keep avoiding this forever," I muttered, and he deigned to reply.

"I don't need to avoid it forever. Just until nightfall."

Frustration rose up in my throat and stung my eyes, and I didn't answer. We marched along the road in hot, vexed silence, dust caking on the bottoms of my feet. Somewhere in the midst of our short-lived argument his hold on my hand had tightened, our haphazard snarl of fingers shifting into a deathgrip. And as the sun began its long descent over Ash Swamp, neither of us let go.


	12. Kakariko

Though we hadn't had rain in days, Ash Swamp was brimming, likely refreshed by some localized weather patterns. Sometimes the fog creeping in from the Necluda sea would get trapped behind the Dueling Peaks and the range encircling the lowlands, and left with nowhere else to go would condense and drip fat, bulbous drops from the Jia Highlands to Naydra Snowfield. The pools of stillwater dappled between the sedge and swampweed glowed orange, rich and sweet, as the sun tipped towards Mable Ridge. Under different circumstances I might have called it lovely. But as things were, the spectacle was a jeweled face on a ticking clock.

Daruk, Mipha, and Urbosa caught up with us on the shore of Lake Siela. By then I'd put my shoes back on, and when I tentatively loosened my grip on his hand, Link all but dropped me. Beyond Kakariko Bridge, a canyon cut a swathe through the northerly ridge of mountain range, snaking between the Pillars of Levia and Banooru's Stand. Its walls rose up out of the slope with unnerving purpose—impassable, claustrophobic, whispering about the secret things that lay concealed just beyond the next bend. It had never struck me as forbidding before, but suddenly the narrow entrance felt like a hand around my throat. Link slowed as we wound through the pass, each step more calculated, more rigid, as though he could feel it closing around his, too.

When the canyon finally spilled open and the village came into view, it was abandoned.

The chimes knocked together hollowly where they were strung up around the village, dangling from gables and swaying over uneven paths knotted with grass. Gardens were left untended, implements still caked with dirt propped against the walls. Shutters were closed in spite of the cool evening breezes rustling through the valley from Lanayru.

It was almost as though they had known something horrible was coming.

"I've never seen it so quiet," I whispered.

Urbosa frowned, turning for the Great Hall looming over the valley, and murmured, "Let's try the Elder's house."

It was nestled due east, nearly opposite where we had entered, it's towering thatched roof and sweeping beams shrouded in mist and shadow. Lantern Lake above spilled in so many waterfalls between the crags and the lumpen peaks to surround the lonely peninsula where the house rested on old, thick stilts. The last, yawning strokes of sunlight spread with long fingers above the cliffs as we stepped into the house's shadow, like the points of an intangible crown.

And then, as though summoned, the dark wooden doors atop the impressive stairwell to the veranda opened wide, and the Elder stood at the threshold.

I had met her before, of course, on several occasions. I was the daughter of Hylia. She was there the day I was born. But there had always been some ritual or other surrounding our meeting to keep me from feeling bare: delegations and oaths in the throne room, or long prayers murmured before spiritual leaders and throngs of enraptured faithful, or a traditional procession through her village to lay an offering at Cotera's glittering fountain. Something that made me feel worthy, or at least necessary. Facing her now, wearing the filthy costume of a champion and bereft of jewels or ceremony, I felt remarkably empty. She was calm, and wisened, but more than all else she was Sheikah, and the combination of all three was a fearsome thing to behold.

"I would like to speak with the princess and her companion alone," she called down, her tone sweet, and smiling, and utterly undefiable. "The rest of you will wait here, please. The last thing I need is a Goron crashing through my front porch."

Daruk scratched at the back of his head and chuckled, abashed, while I exchanged uneasy glances with Urbosa. But Link was already mounting the first steps, apparently neither intimidated by her demands nor concerned that we seem to have been expected. He turned back a third of the way up to stare curiously, and I swallowed down misgivings.

"You don't think it's odd that she knew we were coming?" I breathed beside him, as the Elder, satisfied, turned to retreat into the hall.

"The Sheikah are always odd," he scoffed. "And that's the way they like it."

Beyond the two-leafed doors the audience room was dark, the windows already cast in shadow. A blue carpet runner stretched from the door to the dais on the back wall, flanked on either side with rows of cushions to accommodate any number of villagers, should the need arise. The Elder sat on a zabuton at the head of the room, with two much younger Sheikah kneeling at her immediate left and right, and two more zabuton had been pulled from the arrangement and dragged closer, making for a more intimate circle. A few lanterns strung above her head cast a dim glow over the room. She was turning a bamboo whisk in a glazed bowl of matcha, staring into the steam as though it were much more interesting than the bedraggled princess and her half-demon companion standing at the threshold.

"Close the doors, please," she said quietly, and she spoke with such authority I nearly turned to do it myself. But Link was quick, and the look he gave me when he noticed my lapse was scolding. She gestured to the cushions placed on the other side of her tea tray. "We have much to discuss."

Link shadowed me to the dais, letting me lead for a change, only kneeling when I did. The young woman to the Elder's right touched her cuspidate, red-rimmed glasses, holding them up softly as though the angle afforded her a better view through the lenses, and then offered a slow, gentle nod. The Elder sighed out her nose, barely looking up from the steam rising out of her chawan to acknowledge it.

"Interesting," she hummed. "Troublesome. I'm not sure Hyrule has ever had the misfortune to have the Hero and Calamity be one and the same." And then, too easily, "Tea?"

I waved my hand in a soft declination, mouth twisting, and the Elder met my eyes.

"You're surprised."

"I suppose I shouldn't be," I murmured, "but yes."

"We see the truth," she said, an almost resigned air to her paltry explanation, and then turned her crimson eyes on Link. "We see what you are."

"Then you must be at a loss as to why I'm here," he mused, slanting his head in my direction so I knew exactly for whose benefit he spoke, and the tips of my ears burned.

"It did strike me as odd." She finished whisking her tea, and took a long, bitter sip, mulling. "You must tell me everything."

He paused, considering, eyes swirling darkly in my peripheral. But I didn't know if his hesitation was a consequence of her unusual lack of fear, or of the sudden presence of an audience, or because 'everything' was exceedingly difficult to quantify—was it a lost war, the origins of an ageless curse, thousands of years of torture that should have driven him mad long ago, the misadventures of an audacious princess who insisted on meddling with affairs in which she had no right to interfer? But then he started, and the quiet strength in his voice, the confidence, made me wonder if the hesitation had been a figment of my imagination.

"How much do you know?"

"We know that our technology was not powerful enough to turn the tide of battle in the princess's favor. We know that, somehow, the Calamity and the Hero who challenged him 10,000 years ago have emerged after all this time as one entity. And we know that you have the Sword that Seals the Darkness in your possession."

"A history lesson," he scoffed, unimpressed, "and two passing observations."

She chuckled into her tea bowl. "Perhaps you'd better start at the beginning."

His eyes met mine where I was watching him sidelong, just briefly—thoughtfully, like he was looking at a riddle, or its answer. But as quickly as it had come his gaze was gone, moving to stare through memory.

"The Beasts and the Guardians performed exactly as they were meant to. But I had felled armies before. This one was no different."

A chill crept down my spine. Even though he had never claimed to be anything different, it was jarring hearing him recall those events from the Calamity's perspective. He felt it. His eyes drifted to mine again, held them longer, churning with war.

"The princess didn't have the strength to cast me out as I was. So she used the boy wielding the soul of the hero as a vessel, sealing us with a bond she knew could not easily be broken."

The Elder stopped, her chawan hovering partway to her lips, and frowned, setting it back down again.

"We knew the fate of our princess, but the body of the hero was never recovered. It was impossible to say for certain what transpired during that fateful battle, but we all had our suspicions. If what you say is true, then everything we feared has come to pass."

And then, eyes closed, arms bent and hands braced on her knees, the Elder bowed low towards him, and the other Sheikah followed.

"Forgive us," the Elder said. "We have failed you."

Link was quiet for a long time, scanning the display with impassive eyes. I tried to swallow my heart back down where it belonged in my chest, confined behind my ribs, from where it had lodged in my throat. But it seemed intent on rising back up whenever I tried to breathe.

He finally said, "It was never your burden to bear. Or your destiny."

I tried to harness his elusive eyes with mine, tried to wrench his attention away and glimpse in them if he was implying with that simple dismissal everything I feared he was: that the destiny and the failure was somehow his. But he wouldn't look.

"Destiny is a fickle thing," the Elder said, and I reached out with furious, trembling hands for one of the chawan and the whisk.

"I'll have some of that tea now," I murmured, and she smiled graciously, spooning powder into the bowl and pouring hot water over the mound before reaching for her own drink again.

"I had 10,000 years to think about what I would do once I emerged from the seal," he continued as I cradled the tea to my chest, stirring slowly. "I realized there were… possibilities."

The Elder hummed thoughtfully, knowingly, ominously, fingers drumming the rim of her tea bowl. "A mortal Calamity. What conclusion did you come to?"

"That the Sword that Seals the Darkness driven through my heart could devour the Calamity entirely."

The two younger Sheikah exchanged startled glances, but the Elder didn't seem particularly shocked, though her eyebrows floated upwards. Perhaps that was as close to genuine surprise as she ever got.

"An intriguing idea," she mused, "though I admit such things are beyond my ken. And clearly there is more to the story, or you would not be here."

"Clearly," he said, flatly, turning to scowl at me.

I had just put the whisk down and sipped my tea, and was wearing an untimely grimace from the bitterness. I coughed.

"It's a long story," I said, deciding it best to forgo the unnecessary details of the last few days. "But we're here because of the Shrine on the Plateau."

The Elder was staring into the steam wafting out of her tea bowl again. She took so long to answer I almost wondered if she hadn't heard me. The Sheikah at her left and right had their heads bowed, as though staring at their hands; but they were staring at each other.

"That technology caused my people a lot of heartache," she finally sighed, and then cast a pointed look at Link. "And we went to great lengths to hide its existence."

He rolled his eyes. "I had nothing to do with uncovering your precious secrets."

"It's true," I said. "I had visions—dreams, memories. It all came to me in pieces. First in the Lost Woods, and then again at Thyphlo Ruins. They led us to the Plateau, but the Shrine isn't working. We came to see if you could repair it."

She raised a silvery eyebrow, casting her scoffing gaze at Link. "All of this just to save you?"

"I've tried talking her out of it. Several times."

"And he's only given me until nightfall to find answers," I interjected, frowning at him. "So whatever you can tell us, please do it quickly."

"We may be able to help you," she admitted, sighing. "But please understand that the situation is complicated."

Her eyes met mine, all dark and bloody in the lamplight, and she suddenly seemed too ancient, too powerful, and all I could do was nod. She took that as some sort of consent, breathing deeply again as she began to explain.

"After our technology led the princess to defeat, the king ordered it destroyed. And much of it was." She stopped to sip her tea again, lost in thought. "It was a dark time in our history. The country was rattled, and the king was consumed by grief, and people wanted someone to blame. There were countless arrests made on ambiguous charges, and most were never heard from again. Many of our greatest minds were lost."

My stomach dropped as I thought of Maz, of his ambition, watching the ghost of his face, that clever smile. There was so much he wanted to do once the war was over, so many wondrous, _peaceful_ things he wanted to build. I got the feeling that he never got the chance.

"But we couldn't bear to erase that knowledge entirely—what may very well have been our people's greatest accomplishment. So we buried what we could intact. And we clandestinely passed down the science to our children—just a handful from each generation. Purah and Robbie are among those few," she added, gesturing to the Sheikah beside her. "And so is Impa."

I nodded, still feeling numb all over, and murmured, "I've sent for her."

"Good."

Then she made an open-handed gesture, satisfied, and the Sheikah beside her came to life.

"That shrine is incomplete and untested," Robbie murmured. "And it has enormous power requirements. Not exactly designed to run on cores, hm?"

"No," Purah agreed, adjusting her glasses again. "It's the furnace that's the problem. It's supposed to be self-sustaining, but without a conduit to the reservoirs beneath Mount Hylia—"

"No, no, we just need to introduce a flame to get the reaction started. It won't last without more fuel, of course, but it should get the job done."

"We'll need lanterns," she muttered, whipping a pencil out from behind her ear and folds of paper from her breast pocket to scribble notes.

"And they'll need an Interface," he said, too loudly, leaning around the Elder between them to make sure she had written it down.

The Elder endured the sudden chaos with practically no reaction, bringing her bowl to her mouth as though Robbie hadn't nearly draped himself over her lap to solemnly drink her tea.

"And time will be an issue," Purah went on, not glancing up from her notes. "After the Sword is driven through his heart, we'll have a relatively small window to place him in the Shrine. Once brain death occurs, there won't be much of him left to save."

I was about to correct her, explain that the Calamity could be purged like an infection, when Link asked instead, his voice gravel, "And you're certain the Shrine isn't going to resurrect the Calamity?"

"That depends on the accuracy of your hypothesis. The Shrine restores organic material at a cellular level. It can't heal what no longer exists in your physical form. So if the Sword really can devour all that the Calamity is, then it shouldn't be possible."

"And _that_ is something we can't help you with," Robbie frowned. "It will be entirely up to the princess to determine if that procedure is a success."

My throat closed, my brain stuttering as it rushed to make sense of what they were saying. Misfiring. Because that couldn't be right, could it? That after all this, jumping through hoops and torturing ourselves looking for answers, it still came back to this? To driving a sword through his heart?

There had to be another explanation. A misunderstanding. But every argument I conjured was flawed. There was always one loose end. A scrap of doubt where certainty should have been. And I had been so certain...

_You know less than you think._

I looked for his eyes. I stared and stared and stared. But he wouldn't look at me, his gaze unwaveringly fixed on the Sheikah scheming with him. Had he known? Had he always known? It made no sense. It was such a jarring, unwelcome contradiction to my expectations. And he couldn't have, because he never said...

_There's something about all this I haven't told you._

I couldn't breathe. The room was spinning. They were still arguing about minutiae and hypothesizing all sorts of awful things—exactly how long _could_ he live, even half-Calamity, with a sword driven through his chest? And who would outlive who? And how long would the resurrection process take? And if the flame ran out before it finished, would the Shrine be able to keep him from decaying until they could reignite the power source?—and the more they talked the more sick I felt. The truth was staring me in the face, and I couldn't stand it.

Everything I'd done up until now…. It was all for nothing.

_It can wait._

"That's settled then," the Elder finally decided, just as I swallowed a scream. "Impa will spearhead the efforts on the Plateau, Robbie will lead the way in Akkala, and Purah will take the rest to Necluda. Tonight you will accept our hospitality, and leave as soon as you're able tomorrow."

Link opened his mouth to object, scowling, but the Elder held up her hand to forestall him.

"You gain nothing by leaving before Impa can accompany you, or before the princess has rested, and you have your answers, as promised," she said. "Now if you'll wait here with Robbie, I have some things for you."

I could practically hear him grinding his teeth, but he stayed put. My fingertips were numb. I realized I was still holding my chawan, my knuckles white against the glaze. It was nearly full. I set the bowl down, rubbing tension from my hands. Then Purah stood and led me out of the room.

I'm not even sure why I followed her. I just did as I was told.

Outside, she invited Mipha and Urbosa to walk with us and turned towards the hot springs, leaving Daruk to dither alone in the yard. They tried to get answers out of me as we walked, of course, but I let Purah do most of the talking. She was more than happy to reiterate all the pertinent details.

I didn't offer much when they asked why this plan sounded so different from the one I had pitched to them two days ago. I hardly had satisfying answers for them. Because I was naive? Because I was a fool? Part of me wanted to scream it aloud, but my jaw felt knit shut.

My emergence from the Great Hall must have been some kind of sign, because shortly thereafter the village slowly came back to life. Windows opened, lanterns lit, and children hung out over the sills, staring as we passed by with owlish garnet eyes.

We climbed up the hill to the women's bathhouse and then down the back steps to the rotenburo overlooking Lantern Lake, stripped at the water's edge, and lowered ourselves into the cloudy pools as the Sheikah took our clothes away to wash. By then the sun was gone, impressions of the cliffs and water breathing out of the darkness in pale slivers of trapped moonglow and starlight. After barely any time at all Mipha slipped out, preferring to soak in the lake below. Urbosa was uncharacteristically quiet, pretending not to watch me brood out of the corner of her eye.

"You don't like this plan," she finally said, scrubbing at an extended forearm with unnecessary attention.

The spring water sloshed red and the steam swirled amethyst, and I had to blink color and memory away before I could answer. I swallowed, whispered, "It's just… not what I was hoping for."

She didn't seem convinced. But she let it go, though I couldn't say why. Maybe it was the way I was staring daggers into the water, looking for answers, trying to riddle out how I let this all unravel around me. Maybe it was the way I had plopped myself in the water like a stone and hadn't moved since, my fingers gripping the rock steps beneath us and shoving up shoulders up too tightly. Maybe it was because the reflection I had thought was starlight was actually goddessglow coming from my eyes. I wasn't sure.

Eventually Mipha emerged from the lake, trudging up to the bathhouse to retrieve her things from where they were drying beside the irori, and shortly thereafter Urbosa announced she was clean and went up after her. I realized that I still hadn't moved, that there was still dirt under my fingernails and smudges up my arms. I tried to focus on the task at hand, working at little things, scrubbing at marks and imperfections and flaws wherever I could see them in the moonlight.

I scraped at grime and dirt from the road until my skin and scalp were raw, my chest full of steam. I imagined scraping until I could clean off the stain of his blood, of using him _again_ , of wanting to give up the moment something was demanded of me. But I couldn't. No matter how hard I scrubbed, no matter how red my skin, no matter how it burned. It just wouldn't come off.

I pulled myself out of the scalding water when the moon rose higher, drawn out by a sudden thrill of emptiness when I felt Link's presence too far away and frustrated with my fruitless scrubbing besides. My clothes were laundered and dry beside the irori in the bathhouse.

Purah met me again after I had gotten dressed and took me back down to the village. I felt tugged northwest, up the hillside, but I forced my feet to follow where Purah guided me.

"Link didn't think it wise to spend the night in the village," she announced, unexpectedly, as we moved in front of the Elder's house, and then she gestured up the cliffs, up to where pulse was pulling me closer. "He said the safest place for him was in Cotera's woods, and grandmother agreed. You are always welcome to stay in the Great Hall, of course, but he said you wouldn't want to be separated."

"No," I agreed, grudgingly, imaging the swirl of malice and fury that had engulfed him at the mouth of the Lost Woods. "It's best if we don't."

"And of course your champions insisted on going where you go, even though there's a perfectly good inn in town," she smirked. "All a bit overzealous, don't you think?"

"Yes, they can be," I sighed, though I was secretly grateful to have them for company. Not that they could make the path we were all but bound to take any more palatable. But at least, when I drove the blade through him, I wouldn't be alone. Suddenly I felt the need to change the subject. "The Elder is your grandmother? Does that make Impa your sister?"

"I'm afraid so," she said, and then smirked at me again. "She's a stern little thing."

I waited a beat, two, weaving a little as the grade shifted beneath our feet, and then drifted closer to speak to her more quietly.

"Do you really think it will work? This plan?"

"Sure it'll work," she shrugged easily. "If Impa can rig the furnace, and if Robbie and I have any luck getting blue flame from Akkala or Hateno, and if that sword does what the hero says it does."

I swallowed a frown. "That's a lot of ifs."

"Yes, well. That's science for you. But I wouldn't worry. Besides, if all else fails you can just seal him again."

I found myself staring too intently through the path, not just because sending him back to the void was a harrowing thought, but because I genuinely didn't know if I even _could_. He had fought back on the field and overpowered me. If he cooperated, I could probably manage. But if the sword separated them—if it killed him, and the Calamity survived in some other form—I honestly didn't know what I would be up against.

Purah noticed. "You… _can_ seal him again, can't you?"

I nodded too quickly, forcing a false smile that nearly made my jaw crack. "I think so."

She puffed out a humorless breath, folding her arms, and turned to lead me up the slope towards the fountain. At the crest of the hill, she pointed towards a soft orange glow between the trees and took her leave.

I followed the flickering firelight into the thicket and found my champions huddle around it, enjoying a meal—Revali included. Daruk was wearing a grin as wide as a caldera, cradling a massive slab of rock in his hands. Mipha was sampling some of the Sheikah offerings dantily, and Urbosa was pretending not to watch me again.

"Welcome back," I said, suddenly drained as I approached the ring. "Did everything go as planned?"

"Fine," Revali frowned, and then knocked back a whole trout in one gulp, scales and all. "Though I would appreciate it if in future you brought that heroic dog of yours to heel."

"He's no dog of mine," I muttered, frowning even deeper than he was, and Daruk wheeled in, ever quick to divert dismal conversation to someplace friendly and edible.

"Didja see all this food, Princess?" he boomed. "They even had rock sirloin for me, all the way from the Eldin! They brought up a fancy box for you, kai-somethin'."

"Kaiseki," Mipha corrected him gently. She offered me a tight, transparent smile. "It's quite delicious."

She made the observation sound like a quiet command, a verbal sleight of hand only another princess would probably ever notice. I yielded, joining them in the space they had left for me with a quiet sigh, and opened the elaborate bento. The contents were beautiful and delicate, giving off the pungent scent of brine and sweet egg and rice vinegar.

My stomach roiled. But I knew I needed to eat something. I forced plain white rice into my mouth and chewed. Strange, I thought, that I could barely bring myself to eat for nerves, while somewhere in that veiled forest Link was silently starving.

"We were saying Revali and I should accompany Robbie to Akkala," Mipha went on as I took another mouthful, "while Daruk and Urbosa go to Hateno."

"I suggested the girls versus the boys," Urbosa shrugged, and Revali's eyes glinted, betraying his infamous competitive streak.

"Daruk would have a hard time moving quickly through the wetlands," Mipha countered softly, "and I can take the waterways through Lanayru all the way into Akkala. It's more efficient."

"Time is of the essence," Revali sighed, leaning against the stone at his back and folding his wings behind his head. "The two of us are the obvious choice."

I let my attention wander as Urbosa made some quick remark or other about him carrying Robbie all the way to Akkala that likened him to a mule and the conversation quickly declined. I scanned the woods, feeling the Calamity lurking somewhere beyond the shadows. He was too far away to make out this long after sunset, and I wasn't sure if it was cowardice or mercy that moved him to be. But I hardly needed light to know where he was.

I could see him in my mind's eye, a dark silhouette moving amidst the trees. His shape stopped, turning, and through the darkness and the quarter mile separating us, I felt him look at me.

"I'm going for a walk," I breathed, setting down my half finished meal, and turned to move in the opposite direction.

"Princess," Urbosa called, and I was ready to whirl, ready to snap, ready to shout that whatever sermon she had to beat me over the head with could wait until the morning. But when I turned she was holding a flagon out to me. "Take this."

Part of me wanted to dive into her arms and cry—the part that didn't know how to have a mother beyond the age of six. But it was a piece of me that was shrinking in influence all the time. I offered her a bland impersonation of a smile instead and said, "Thank you."

And I did drink, knocking the flagon back and gulping water as I walked like a drunkard with his ale trying to drown fresh sorrows. It didn't burn, didn't heat my stomach or muddle my head, but it was cool, and bracing, and there was something satisfying about the way it made my throat ache.

I wandered until I found myself alight in the ethereal glow and spangles of Cotera's fountain, and my feet didn't stop until I was standing at her steps. I had no offering to lay at her altar and not even a rupee in my pocket to toss into the pool, but I hoped she wouldn't mind. I was divine, after all. That had to count for something.

_You must not be so mortal as I thought._

I climbed her polished steps, sprouting from between the sprawling open petals of her fountain like so many toadstools, sat at the top with the simmering waters and golden plates of her shrine at my back, and dropped my head into my hands. I wasn't even sure what I was doing there. I just needed to be alone for a moment, come to terms with the disappointment and the dread that were churning up a windstorm in my ribcage. But I didn't know where to begin. All I knew was I that I didn't want to see Link's face for the rest of the night.

And then, as though summoned, there he was.

He flickered into view, half of him draped in shadow and the other soaked in fairy light, so blurred and sudden that he could have teleported out of the dark just as likely as he walked. My eyes scanned him as he stepped further into the glow of the fountain, absorbing the changes I hadn't seen in the dark. He was cleaner, for one thing, probably having been sent off to the hot springs himself. The Sword was mounted in a proper scabbard—royal blue with gold inlay burnished to an unreal shine—and if it wasn't the same one from my dreams, it was a perfect replica. A slate hung from his belt at his hip, raised all over with those serpentine, clay-colored shapes and constellations from the walls of the Shrine, and the Sheikah eye on the back gave off its own blue and orange light. And he wore a new tunic, the same sky blue of the other champion's clothes replacing the blood-stained, old-fashioned forest green he had been wearing when he first appeared.

It was the tunic I had made.

And it was like the man from the memories had stepped out of one plane and into this one: armed with a Sheikah slate, and the right scabbard, and wearing the fresh uniform of a champion. It made it harder to breathe.

I scowled at him. "Where did you get that?"

I suppose I could have meant any of his new equipment, but my eyes were glued to the sword pattern etched on his chest, and he seemed to garner my meaning.

"Your Sheikah advisor brought it," he said, unbothered.

I looked over the familiar garment again, searching for puckers or rumples. But there weren't any. It fit him _perfectly_. Had some part of me known what was going to happen, even back then? Known that it would be him coming out of the fissure? The thought made my palms itch with imagined light.

I didn't bother telling him. I didn't bother saying anything. He studied me for a moment, my silence, his eyes glittering in too many colors in the light of the fountain.

"You're angry."

I barked a derisive laugh. It was all I could do. "Oh, yes. I am angry."

He joined me on the rosy steps, lowering himself on the tier beneath mine, and glanced sidelong at the pool when the water bubbled in protest. "So is she. I doubt she likes my being so close."

"At the moment, neither do I," I frowned. "I suppose we'll both just have to deal with it."

"You're angry because you think I lied."

"You always lie. I'm _used_ to you lying, if you can believe it. It's the fact that you let me believe that I wouldn't have to—" I stopped, gripping the step as I swallowed too much volume and a burning rush of salt. "But you knew. You knew from the beginning."

"Do you want to save what's left of my soul," he breathed, "or don't you?"

I met his eyes. He looked totally unmoved. Totally unapologetic. And perfectly, tantalizingly familiar.

"You should have told me," I said instead of answering.

He hummed thoughtfully, leaning back on his elbows. "I thought about it."

"Why didn't you?"

"Does it matter?"

"You keep asking that," I grumbled. "Pretending to make some point, like an answer lacking significance doesn't merit saying. But it's just another way to avoid telling me the truth."

He puffed a mirthless laugh. "In future, I'll just deny you outright."

My palms slammed fruitlessly on the step, producing neither satisfying sound nor vibration, and I glowered at him. But his eyes didn't mirror my irritation back at me. If anything, they were smiling.

I studied him a moment longer before I decided, scowling, "You like me better angry."

He smirked. "Sometimes."

I crossed my arms and stowed my fury, determined to be as unamusing as possible. But the more I tamed hate, the more I threatened to feel hurt, and it was a daunting balancing act walking the wire between the two.

I had been rehearsing all the things I was going to say to him when I was finally ready. Now he was here, and I couldn't think of a thing to blast him with. How dare you insist on giving your life for my country? On asking me, the only person who could possibly keep the Calamity at bay, to help you? I could hardly be angry with him for being selfless. And yet I was. And I was angry that he had let me hope there would be an easier way.

"What are you doing here?" I finally breathed, when the silence had stretched too long, and the scattered jingle of fairies and blupees skirting the fountain began to grate.

He took a breath, and then stopped, head tipping askance in thought. "Do you want me to warn you every time I'm going to lie to you?"

"Then what's the point of lying?"

"You said you were used to my lying. You're angry because I let you believe one of them."

"Prefacing every lie would take so much time that talking to you would become a chore," I droned, leveling a bland stare at him that said it already was.

"A tell, then?" he offered. He tilted his head slowly, a little too far, like he was listening for something.

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. But you're going to get a crick in your neck."

"I don't lie as often as you think," he scoffed. "I didn't even lie to you about the shrine." My eyes and my mouth sprung open to object, but he cut me off before I could properly interrupt. "I never said the shrine would do what you thought it would."

I pursed my lips. I wanted so badly to argue. I wanted so badly from him to be wrong. But I knew he wasn't. Not really. I fought back anyway. "A lie by omission is still a lie."

He laughed again, that breathless, mirthless sound, and it made my chest too tight. "Fine. Blame me if you want to."

Oh, I wanted to. But now that I had his permission it was somehow much less satisfying. I clamped my arms around myself tighter, grasping at indignation. Determined to stay bitter, to stay angry, no matter how unfulfilling it was.

"Are you going to tell me what you want, or aren't you?" I sighed hotly, narrowing my eyes at the back of his head. "Don't tell me you just missed me."

And then he tilted his head slowly, a little too far, like he was listening for something.

"Of course not."

I froze, and he turned, meeting my eyes. A hot, furious knot tangled in my throat. Why was it that he chose now, of all times, when all I wanted was to hate him, to make himself seem less callous? Less cruel? More _human_? Maybe it was because he knew I wanted to be angry, and he was trying to ruin it for me. Or maybe he was more human than he let others believe, and it was that thought that kept me paralyzed.

"I came to tell you to get some rest," he finally said. "You're going to need it."

I took the opportunity to clamber down the steps, to get myself the distance I suddenly, desperately needed. I snapped, not daring to look back, "Then you could have sent someone else."

"You wouldn't have listened to someone else."

I made the mistake of turning to glare, and found him sitting on that prismed step, surrounded by fairy glow, his hands threading from where they were balanced on his knees and his eyes watching me carefully—churning that constant crucible of molten ore and cold sapphire, piercing and glittering and hungry.

I let him have the last word, turning my back on him again to flee with as much of my pitiful fury as I could muster. Somehow he always seemed to have it anyway.

At the fire, the champions were dividing the watches. I snuck into the ring of firelight and curled up on the borrowed bedroll, turning my face into the pillow, determined to see no one and desperate for the day to be over. The others didn't bother me. I'm sure it didn't take Urbosa's legendary intuition to see that I was fuming, and they wisely kept from trying to talk me out of it.

Finally, Daruk sighing peacefully near me like an undulating boulder, and Revali out cold in the makeshift hammock he had put up between the trees, and Mipha tossing restlessly, and Urbosa humming an old Gerudo lullaby I didn't ask for, I slipped under, too exhausted to walk the tightrope anymore and dreading whatever sleep had in store for me.

And then Mipha was shaking me awake.

"Zelda," she hissed, out of focus, glistening something closer to blue rather than red in the moonlight. Her eyes were brighter than the rest of her, snatching at reflections like polished citrines. "You need to wake _up_."

"I _am_ ," I sighed groggily, swatting at her arms in an ineffective display that proved just the opposite.

I glanced blearily at the others. They were all still sleeping.

"Come on," she said, tugging at my arm. "It's Link."

At that I let myself be pulled, still not quite lucid, not quite over my anger, but aware enough of the warning in Mipha's voice to know it must be serious. We left the others behind at the smoldering fire and stumbled through the dark towards the beacon in her healer's eyes, snaking between trees and over roots and undergrowth and stones, and rounding the pond nestled at the heart of the bosk.

I could _taste_ him before I could see him, the air tinged with an invisible film of malice as we drew close. He was on his knees, his dusky silhouette cradling his head with one hand, and when he sensed our proximity he dragged his eyes up to glower, muttering a string of words that I vaguely recognized as an ancient Zoran curse. Mipha had absolutely no reaction.

"What is it going to take for me to get you to mind your own business?" he growled thickly, writhing. "I told you I have this under control!"

She ignored him, glancing sidelong at me instead. Watching me study him, the way he shook, the way every breath rattled out like a roar.

"It's gotten worse," I decided, frowning, and she nodded.

"It came on suddenly, flaring up over the last hour or so."

Mipha folded her arms, and I left her side to step closer.

"Link," I said, and swallowed a thrill of fear when his eyes, bright and ravenous, snapped over to bore into mine. "Tell me what I can do."

"There's nothing you can do," he spat, and I sighed.

"You know that's not true."

His muscles seized, expression screwing between wrath and agony, and when his hands clawed at the earth, reaching for an imaginary hold, the ground tremored. I shoved terror and instinct aside and moved closer, kneeling.

"I can help," I said again, reaching slowly, determinedly, to touch him. But he grabbed my wrist, holding it aloft between us with a painful grip before I could get close enough.

"Touch my mind again," he seethed, breathless, "and I'll kill you."

I pursed my lips. He was stubborn even at the best of times, but as he was now—hurting, hungry, clinging to his resolve like it was all he had left—I knew I had my work cut out for me. And I knew he would never accept help if there was an audience.

"Thank you, Mipha," I said, using the same verbal sleight of hand she had earlier. "You can go."

She only hesitated a moment before I heard her slip away, though I very much doubted she went far. She didn't trust either of us enough to leave the situation completely unsupervised. And perhaps that made her wisest of us all.

"Link, _please_ ," I started again. "Let me help you."

"I already told you," he breathed, sagging a little once it was just the two of us, and shoved my wrist back at me. "I need to do this alone."

I settled in again, knowing that coercing him wouldn't be easy. Knowing that he needed me, whether he would admit it or not. He couldn't function like this, and I very much doubted his hunger would spontaneously go away on its own.

"You can't," I reasoned. "You've tried. Do you really believe you'll last another day like this? Or two? We don't know how long repairing the shrine will take."

He grimaced, riding hunger pangs to their breathless finish before he gritted out a response. "If I can't last, we'll use the Sword."

"You know I'd force this on you before I resorted to that."

"Not if I drive it through my own heart first."

We stared each other down, both immovable, both too self-righteous. Neither willing to budge, even as precious seconds drained out of reach.

"Don't do this," I frowned. "Don't condemn yourself to suffer just to spite me."

He scoffed, quivering. "Is that what you think?"

"I don't know what to think of you," I told him honestly. "I don't even know how sharing a dream could temper your hunger the way it does. But I know I could take it away, if you would just _let me_ …"

And I was moving again, thoughtlessly drifting, reaching—but instead of blocking me again he reared back and to his feet, scrambling to get away, and I startled.

It was horrible and strange, watching him run from me for a change.

"No," he said, bracing himself rigidly against whatever bole he could find, and then slumping defeatedly into it. "I can't. I can't, and I won't."

And just like that it was gone again: the armor, the darkness in his eyes that blotted out every last ounce of light, and the pain scrawled over his face was only partly birthed from starvation. I held still, heart sputtering in my throat, knowing he was cracked open and vulnerable, and fearing that the moment would be gone too soon.

I whispered, desperate, "Why?"

He stopped to catch his breath, pinching his eyes closed.

"Do you have any idea what it's like," he panted, swallowing, trembling as the hunger shuddered unforgivingly through him, "to want to worship you and tear you apart at once?"

His teeth closed over nothing as it peaked and crashed over him, and his shoulders heaved as he loosed a haggard breath in the moment next. The topaz and the sapphire of his irises danced wildly as it ebbed, betraying the struggle thrashing beneath. When he finally met my eyes again they writhed with lightning, and it was like being back in the storm.

"If I'm weak enough to give in to one, I'm weak enough to give in to the other. Can't you understand that?"

My brow scrunched as I pieced together his scattered logic, as I remembered broken words spoken in the heat of anger, and other hungers not so easily quelled, and the rainwater taste of his mouth on mine, drawing breath and reason from me in equal measure. And what could I say to that? That it wasn't weakness? That I trusted him to indulge himself that way, and not the other? The truth was he wasn't wrong. And yet, I wanted to tell him that he it wasn't, and that I did. And that made me the biggest fool of all of us.

What an absolutely pitiable mess we had gotten ourselves into. I clenched my fists, scraping together my resolve, and met his eyes.

"You're a coward," I spat.

His eyes widened a fraction, molten strands flaring dangerously. But as he rose to meet my challenge, jaw taut, muscles coiled, stalking closer with half-unearthed rage, I only felt bolder.

"You're afraid of what you are and what you're capable of, just like I am. But I've never let my fear stop me from doing what needed to be done. Not like you. You're terrified of making a mistake. You're constantly trying to outmaneuver what you fear by avoiding it altogether. That's why you're alone."

I watched him tower over me without moving to meet him, the way his whole body was alight and seething, the way his hands and teeth and eyes flinched with fury, the way every word struck so much closer to the mark than I ever could have imagined.

I breathed, sighed, trembled with realization, "That's why you'll fail."

He stopped his advance to bow his head, suppressing another swell of malice, and the ground rocked again, rumbling through the earth and rustling the treetops. But then it passed, and his eyes were on mine again, hungry and furious.

"You don't know the first thing about fear," he growled, and ice clawed down my spine at the threat in his voice. But I hadn't let fear stop me yet. And I wasn't about to start.

"You don't carry that sword on your back for Hyrule," I sneered. "You carry it for yourself. So that you can abandon us when the fear becomes too much. So that you can run away rather than live with regret. Just like you're running away from what you need to do now. And the only reason you agreed to let me look for the shrine is because you knew it would end with the sword through your chest anyway. And I _hate_ you for that," I hissed, hot, furious tears spilling from my eyes. "I will always hate you for that."

He stepped forward slowly, eyes coiling, burning, hard as flint as he knelt, as he reached with a hand that trembled imperceptibly to brush my hair aside, to come to rest against my temple, and the cold of his touch snatched my breath away. He lingered, weighing the wisdom of making the connection. Weighing the consequences.

Then he whispered, "Good."

And I saw a light like a star, and we were falling.


	13. Dreamscape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the most recent chapter posted on ffn. From here on out, new chapters will be posted in tandem. Thanks for reading!
> 
> [Amazing art](https://embyrinitalics.tumblr.com/post/629886358679420928/its-almost-september-im-hype-for-calamitous) by the lovely [@truffeart](http://truffeart.tumblr.com/).

The sky on the other side was pale with summer twilight. The breeze tasted of sweet grass and swift violets, and somewhere out of sight a whip-poor-will was heralding dusk. We were kneeling in the shadow of a mountain I didn't recognize, some forgotten place in some forgotten Hyrule. His eyes had fallen shut, his shoulders sagging in palpable relief, and in spite of my stubborn intentions I drifted closer.

"Link," I breathed, half concerned and half curious, but the rest of the inquiry fizzled in my throat. He was artificially still, fixated on something invisible, something internal, and I couldn't help but reach to smooth the crease in his brow.

He caught my wrist, startled, as my fingers brushed beneath his bangs; but he didn't push it away, or open his eyes, or dare to move otherwise. He held us both still for a long time; then he turned his face into my palm, breathing deep, and slowly eased his eyes open. I tried again.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so," he murmured, and I didn't need him to look at me to see the clear, cutting blue of his irises, so intense under the blushing twilight that I couldn't make out the amber haloes I knew lurked beneath. "Give me a moment."

I waited, watching his eyes trace my hand, the gnarled shape of his fingers closed around my wrist. I couldn't say what he was looking for. It was like he was waiting for his eyes to focus, or adjust to a sudden burst of light. He finally glanced at our surroundings, noticing the mountain for the first time, the rose and honey spatter of clouds behind its peak, and his jaw spasmed in thought.

"Satori," he murmured.

I frowned at the rocky spill of mountainside, trying to make it out the silhouette I knew so well, but it just wouldn't shapeshift into something recognizable. "It looks different."

"Time changes everything. Even mountains."

He stood, his fingers slipping off my wrist and tangling in my knuckles to pull me after him as he turned up the slope. I followed lazily, not exactly enthused at the prospect of spending a whole's night worth of dreams in his company, but too worn out to bother fighting with him the entire time either. We climbed up the bouldered slant in tired silence, each plateau or outcropping we reached only leading to another daunting incline, and I was reminded of our early travels: grueling hikes with a cruel taskmaster, where escape wasn't an option and there was nowhere to go but forward.

In a lot of ways, things hadn't really changed.

"How much farther?" I complained as we crested our third ridge, but he only tightened his hold and pulled me along faster.

We finally reached a patch of level ground, following its snaking shape around hulking conoids of mountainside. Our path spilled into a hidden grotto that overlooked the great Hyrule fields, soft and transient in the twilight colors and shrouded in mist. Sprouting from a rise of boulder that it grasped with long, knobby roots, a weeping cherry tree bent protectively over a glittering, slate gray pool, dripping a stream of translucent petals. It was picturesque to say the least.

I leveled a glare at the back of his head.

He didn't notice. He let me go and made for the tree, and before I could protest he had wedged the tip of his boot between the roots, grabbed a low-hanging branch, and swung himself up onto the trunk.

" _Link_ ," I hissed as he made his way up the curve of its smooth neck, and his eyes met mine through the shimmering lattice of branches, blue as Lake Hylia on a summer's day and glinting with mischief. They sucked breath from my lungs and pulled me a full three steps deeper into the grotto before I caught myself and cursed him thrice over, very loudly, in my head. "You can't climb that!"

"Why not?"

"It's _sacred_."

"It's just a dream," he countered, even as he proved with every easy, practiced step up to the glistening crown that he had definitely, definitely climbed this tree before. I threw my hands up and turned my back on him, exasperated. I heard the boughs creak as he reclined in its canopy, and then his voice, low and tempting, "The view is better from up here."

I glared over my shoulder. "That's blasphemous, and you're ridiculous."

He only smirked, his gaze sliding back over the mist-laden fields, and let one of his legs dangle from the tree. "Suit yourself."

I scowled, pacing to the water's edge and trying in vain to ignore the boot swaying like a pendulum in my peripheral vision. Of course he was right. Of course it was only a dream. And yes, the extra height would boost me above the row of outcroppings beneath us, sticking up into the otherwise flawless panorama like so many uneven teeth. And yes, the only reason I wasn't joining him on his perch was my own stubbornness.

I stomped my foot.

And then I crossed the length of the pond to the boulder.

"This is blasphemy," I muttered again, bracing my foot against the gnarl of roots as he had and lifting myself on the same low-hanging branch. I couldn't tell if he was smiling smugly over my concession or not; I had completely lost sight of him in the blossoms, save for his swaying boot, the sandy crown of his head, and a lazy arm thrown up over it.

"If anyone has the power to absolve me of my sins, it's you."

I climbed higher, following his voice, using the thick vines as holds as the trunk bent and swooped until I was all but horizontal, and spied him as I cleared the flower clusters. The boughs cascaded out from the stem to droop down towards the water, creating something of a nest. He was reclined comfortably in their cradle, but when he caught sight of me coming he only pointed towards the horizon.

I sidled closer to look. Rivers and plains sprawled in all directions, drawing from the towering fountainhead peaking out of the mist that was Hyrule Castle, and the mountain that would one day become the Dueling Peaks rose up in the west, still whole and unbreakable. The sky still seeped twilight colors, even though night should have caught up with us during the ascent. It was a moment frozen in time.

"This is your Hyrule," I decided, spying so many shapes in familiar places giving off the wrong silhouette. He shrugged a shoulder.

"It was yours, once, too."

Somewhere in the north, azure lights pierced through the mist—lines and rings flickering off stone and shadow, pouring out of some hidden place in Hebra, or from the sky. It was moving, too quickly and too brightly, like a formation of shooting stars. It banked as it reared up behind the castle spires, and I blinked the shape clear. A giant bird.

"Medoh," he said, answering the question I hadn't asked, and I pulled my feet out from under me to sit, a little overcome. The nest crowded us together with its angles, pushing my shoulder into his. "Do you remember?"

"I don't know."

A ghost of forgotten technology echoed in my brain, of the innards of beasts and pedestals and shrines, of circuits and currents and filters that distilled and downloaded data; of strands too complex and fragile to exist outside of the delicate liquid that lubricated their insides like precious lifeblood, and potent enough to mimic magic itself; of a curious knight who had dipped his pinky finger in when the Sheikah weren't looking to taste it, and his priceless grimace when the bitterness coated his tongue and lingered for hours. I stifled a smile, ignoring that disconcerting twist of my stomach that insisted the memory wasn't mine.

"I suppose I must. This is my dream, isn't it?"

He hummed in agreement, slipping deeper into the cradle of the branches, and we lapsed into silence. His shoulder against mine was warm. It was the strangest thing. I wanted to mention it, wanted to fixate on it. I wanted to enjoy it. And then I remembered I was still furious with him and crossed my arms.

If he thought an enchanted grotto and a breathtaking view were enough to pardon him, he had another thing coming.

"I'm sorry I lied to you about the shrine," he murmured suddenly, and despite all my intentions to be aloof and unapproachable, I turned. He was watching me with eyes that were too blue.

"I thought you said you didn't lie."

"Maybe not. But I didn't tell you the truth."

"That's quite the distinction," I droned, letting my gaze drift to the glowing glen beneath us. The water sparkled with tiny knots of light, flickering in and out of sight like questions and answers. I met his eyes again, scraping together the courage to level one of my own. "Why didn't you?"

A small, tired smile pulled at his lips as he thought about it. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I might. You have that tell now."

His smile grew, but he stowed it, thinking. He watched Medoh circle again, watched the Regencia carve a silent path southward that was more serpentine than I remembered.

"It was selfish really," he mused. "You were so certain it would work. So hopeful. I liked seeing you like that, and I knew you would be disappointed if I told you the truth. So I put it off."

I stared, confounded, waiting for a tip or tilt. But his head was perfectly straight. He turned at my silence, brow furrowing to mirror mine. Looking at me like I was the one being odd, when he was the one admitting that he had lied in a clumsy attempt to spare my feelings.

I said, because I couldn't think of anything more dismissive, "That's sweet, but you should know your oath to me doesn't obligate you to thwart disappointment."

"My oath had nothing to do with it."

I frowned at him. "Why are you being like this?"

"Like what?"

I played with a pleat in my skirt—which was odd, since I didn't remember being in a skirt not a few moments ago. But dreams were strange like that.

I frowned deeper, murmured, "Decent."

"When you're so hellbent on being angry?" he smirked, and it was bewilderingly sweet. "Sorry."

I met his eyes, finally, studying him. Where the orange filaments usually coiled around his irises there were speckles of turquoise, glinting with something besides fury—something less awful but just as prevalent, just as unquenchable. It made me want to touch his mouth.

"You're different here," I mused, and his lip quirked.

"Isn't that the point?" Then he leaned closer, spoke quieter, like he was murmuring a confession or a secret. Like we might be overheard in that secluded, illusory place. "When I dream with you, I feel more…"

His jaw spasmed around the rest, like it was hard to quantify.

"Human?" I offered when the pause lingered too long, and he smirked at me again, that disconcerting, dizzying smile.

"Yes."

"You act like it." And then, for good measure, "It's weird."

He laughed—genuinely, quietly, and my chest squeezed. Because I knew that laugh.

"How long have you spent trying to get me to act less of a monster? And now that I am you're disturbed by it."

"It's too familiar," I admitted. "And that's the strangest part of all."

"Zelda," he mused, and something in the way the word hummed, the way it rolled off the back of his tongue, made it clear the name he said wasn't mine.

I nodded, not quite able to stomp down the urge to fidget. "When I saw you in that scabbard and fresh tunic, that Slate on your hip, it was like you'd stepped out of a memory."

"And that bothers you?"

"Those memories aren't _mine_ ," I sighed, letting my head fall back against the blossoms, watching a blush of twilight above my head war with midnight and the earliest of stars. "But I suppose I should be thankful for them."

He laid back, too, watching the night-colors blend. And just like that, I was stargazing with the Calamity, and it didn't feel nearly as wrong as it should have.

"They led you to that shrine you're so fond of," he conceded. "They told you who I was, when the goddesses know I wasn't about to. And if they hadn't led you to that curse she left in Thyphlo Ruins, I would have stopped following you long ago."

"I know," I breathed, a smile tugging at my mouth as glimmers of memory floated up from the depths like flotsam. "You still love her."

"Love her?"

He frowned, turning to study me with eyes that were too luminous, and shifted onto his arm. His jaw clenched as he reached for the rights words, reached for a way to distill the turbulence written all over his face into something easy to convey.

"She anchored me, certainly. For 10,000 years in that void, I was constantly on the brink of losing myself to instinct or hunger or hatred, and I clung to the memory of her like a lifeboat in that goddess-forsaken place. But whatever I felt for her eroded over time like everything else, mutating into something too corrupted to be that." His frown deepened. "It's more like this strange, hardwired obsession. Like I needed her for so long I didn't know how to let go."

I swallowed pity, still determined to be mad even as my stomach gave an awful twist, and arched an eyebrow at him. "She's been the impossible standard to which you've held me since this whole thing started, and now you mean to tell me you aren't in love with her? I don't believe it."

"It's been so long, I can barely remember what she looks like," he admitted, pulling his arm out from under him and rolling to watch the sky again. But then he closed his eyes, brow furrowing in concentration, and murmured, "When I try to picture her, the only face I see is yours."

I stared at him, dumbstruck and perplexed and tempered. I wanted to reach out again to smooth that crease in his brow, ease his eyes open and peer inside until I could puzzle him out. I whispered, "Don't say that."

"Why not?"

Because it wasn't fair. Because it was too tragic. Because I liked hearing it.

"Because it's a horrible thing to say," I deflected instead, and he allowed it with a gentle shrug.

"Not that it matters. I don't think I'm capable of love anymore," he scoffed. But then he glanced my way, watching me askance too long, and amended, "Devotion, maybe."

His eyes were soft and focused, too calm and peaceful and _different_.

I sat up, trying to escape that penetrating blue, and startled.

We weren't in the tree anymore. We weren't even on Satori. We were in the fields. The night was deep and dark, the endless carpet of green dyed teal in the starlight. When the wind blew, it churned around us like an ocean.

When I dared to glance at him his eyes were closed again, his arms folded behind his head. He was the picture of contentment. I frowned, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my chin on them, and tucked the edge of my skirt under my bare toes.

"I don't know what to do with you when you're like this."

"Decent?"

"Sincere."

He blinked lazily at me, his mouth twisting into a grim half smile. "What have I said that I haven't already told you a thousand times?"

The wind gusted across the hillside, churning the prairie around us into a whispering sea. I tiptoed back through memory, skeptical and startled, remembering. The way he fought his nature for me. The way he protected me, from hunger and from thirst and from magic and from himself. The way his instinct when he was at his most broken was to swear himself to me. The way his hand held mine through Ash Swamp.

The way I had dragged him into my mind, the night before or a lifetime before, and he had given in to the war tearing him apart and—

I took a deep breath.

"Is that what this is?" I scoffed, half to him, half to the gods, watching the breeze carry words down the stretch of field. "Devotion?"

"It's all I can give you," he murmured.

When I turned he was standing, his face turned away from the wind and fronds of grass seed brushing at his knees. He looked dark and faraway. And I thought, in this beautiful place, it didn't suit him at all.

I shifted onto my knees and tucked my feet under myself, pulling at a strand of grass and rolling the grains between my fingers. I said, "It's enough."

He loosed a breathless, bitter laugh without turning. "It isn't."

"It is for now."

He faced me then, his head tilting quizzically, like I was the strangest creature he'd ever laid eyes on. The look he gave me made me _feel_ like something strange, something rare and beautiful and nameless.

"You're always so hopeful," he mused. "Don't you ever worry that you're wrong? That this won't turn out the way you think it will?"

I smiled wistfully. "Every day."

"But you never give up," he murmured. "You're bright, even in the dark. You're like a firefly."

Thunder rolled on the horizon. There wasn't enough light to make out stormclouds; just a patch of darkness blotting out stars, growing steadily and promising rain. He saw it, too, offering me his hand to help me to my feet and leading me up the gentle slope. The grass fronds whipped at our legs as the wind gusted again, tangling my hair out behind me and turning my cheeks pink.

He found us an old oak looming beside an outcropping of boulders just as the heavens opened up, enough to shelter us from the worst of the downpour. I settled in the hollow of the rocks while he lingered beneath the overhang. He was too rigid, like he was answering some long-buried reflex to stand guard, even in that lonely place. I watched him a little longer, the tension in his shoulders, the occasional spasm of his jaw, the way he closed his eyes too tightly and the muscles around them jumped, and sighed.

"You're still hurting," I decided.

"It's not bad."

"You shouldn't be feeling it at all, should you?"

"This is hardly an exact science, Zel," he scoffed, and I huffed at his insouciance.

"Well, is it getting any worse?"

He went to respond too quickly, but then thought better of it, glancing at me over his shoulder, and admitted, "I don't know."

I frowned. This was exactly the sort of thing I had been worried about and tried to prepare for: unknown variables that he refused to let me address. But it wouldn't do any good to berate him for it now. I mumbled instead, "'Zel.'"

"Sorry," he smirked, bemused. "Old habit."

"I don't mind," I said absently, still dwelling, and the look he was giving me when I met his eyes again said he wasn't sure how he felt about that. I steered us back into less turbulent territory. "You said you had three theories: that the relief came from the act of dreaming itself, or the reminder of your own humanity, or something I had done."

"Or a combination of the three, or none of the above," he sighed. "What's your point?"

"Clearly dreaming in and of itself isn't enough," I shrugged. "Let's focus on testing the other two."

"And how do you suggest we do that?"

"Well, it might help if you come here and spend some time dwelling on your rediscovered humanity with me instead of standing over there brooding about how calamitous you are."

He rolled his eyes. But then he moved, passing one last suspicious frown at the storm-shrouded landscape, coming to sit beside me. "How do you know what I'm brooding about?"

"It isn't hard to guess. You're not as complicated as you think you are."

He snorted. "Gods. I'm sorry I asked."

"Well you aren't exactly subtle, are you? You're painfully outspoken, and if anyone says something you don't like, you spell them."

"He had it coming," he smirked wryly.

I didn't bother pointing out that the one who had taken the brunt of his peculiar penchant for ending unpleasant conversations with spells was actually _me_.

"Poor Revali. That was a cruel trick you played on him."

"He wasn't wrong though," he mused, lips twitching out of his smirk towards a frown. "I should have ended this a long time ago."

I shook my head. "That's not fair. He oversimplified a situation he doesn't understand. You have your reasons."

"Don't be so generous with me," he scowled. "You know it's because of you."

I turned to contradict him, but I couldn't contradict the look in his eyes. It was too helpless, too resentful. Too charged. Like he was looking at something he hated about himself.

"You make me want things I shouldn't want," he said bitterly. "You make me want to live."

My chest warped so tight I couldn't breathe. The hillside tilted a bit, and the rain fell sideways. Drops pooled in the canopy slanted off the leaves, tumbling over us in cold, fat globules. He didn't react, his stare still fixed and intense. I trembled when one slithered down my spine, when another followed a tendril of matted hair down my cheek to the corner of my mouth so I could taste it.

_Then live_ , I wanted to tell him. _Promise me you'll live._

Before I could conjure something else, he flinched, eyes pinching closed, and I sighed. He was still hurting. I moved closer, running my knuckles soothingly down his cheek to coax him through the pain, and steeled myself as he leaned blindly into my touch, scraping together my courage. He wouldn't last until we could repair the shrine if we couldn't temper his hunger.

And I could think of at least one thing we hadn't tried yet.

I traced his jaw with my fingertips, waiting for the hunger pangs to pass, for him to open his eyes, my heart fluttering in my throat. He studied me as he came back to himself, hands closing around my wrists as my proximity registered, as he guessed my intent, as his own will to resist teetered on the brink of crumbling

"Zelda," he whispered, a plea and a warning.

I didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't know what I was doing as I leaned closer, as I pressed my forehead to his, as I whispered, shaking, "Don't be afraid."

I didn't know what I was doing as I pressed my lips softly to his, as I dared to taste the rain, as I sighed against his mouth when the jolt from it slipped lazily down my spine.

But I knew it had left him undone, and that there was no such uncertainty in him.

He took me in his hands and pressed forward, confident everywhere I had been hesitant, leading us with sure steps where I had merely stumbled. He coaxed my lips apart, threading his fingers behind my ear, through my hair, angling me just so to deepen the kiss and taste me how he liked. His thumbs stroked me through the motions of it the way I had stroked him through his pain, soft and hypnotic, until I felt weightless and consumed, and I couldn't tell if lightning had struck the oak and split it, letting the rain through, or if the storm I was feeling was purely him.

He slowed, lingering, taking my lip gently in his teeth as he made to pull away like the idea made him ache. He searched my eyes when I finally opened them, sill stroking my face like he was trying to soothe me. He murmured, panting, "Are you all right?"

I nestled closer, frowning, burrowing into his hand and against his forehead like I could burrow into that dream and never wake again. I whispered, "No."

And then I rocked towards his mouth again, much preferring their touch to anything they might say. What could he tell me? That everything I was afraid of wasn't sitting right in front of me, unchangeable and unavoidable? That everything would be all right? I knew it wouldn't be. And he seemed to know better than to try to convince me.

The world tipped again, but it was only him leaning us back against the oak. It was still whole; I could feel it on the back of my hand as I traced the bones in his neck, feeling after the way it made him shiver. He had one hand tucked easily around my waist, and the other played with a strand of my hair, or the long line of my ear, or the ridge of my shoulder. Our kisses were long and slow, warm and easy. Even when thunder rumbled overhead. Even when the fields around us would bend and sway with the roar of a cloudburst. Even when salt ran down my face to my lips and mixed with the taste of rain. He just kissed the corners of my eyes and kept on.

He tipped his head back, his chest rising and falling beneath me as he sighed, and I tasted his chin and throat. He threaded his hands in mine, trying to get my attention, and I dropped my head onto his shoulder, not wanting to give it.

"It's almost dawn," he murmured, and I scoffed.

"I haven't been kissing you that long."

"Dreams are strange, always too slow or too fast," he mused, and when I chanced a glance at his eyes they were soft and unfocused, staring through the canopy. "Daruk is trading watches with Urbosa. She's scowling at me."

"You can see all that?"

"I'm not asleep," he said, like I was being absurd. "You are."

I stifled a smile, rolling onto my side and shivering where the cool air passed between us. I was still fascinated by his warmth, by the way I could feel his pulse thrumming beneath my lips where they were pressed into his neck. If I tried feeling for it in the morning, I had no doubt his blood would slosh so cold under his skin that it would burn and leave a mark. The thought stuck like a thorn in my fingertip.

"You won't be the same," I whispered.

He peered down at me, a sad smile on his lips, and said, "No."

He shifted us, leaning forward to lay me in the grass and hovering like he had every intention of joining me there, or at least kissing me into submission. But he just lingered, watching me. Studying, committing to memory, like this moment was about to be lost forever and never found again. I frowned at him.

"What?"

He smiled, and it was too soft.

"Sleep well, Princess," he said, and pulled away, leaving me staring at the oak boughs.

When I sat up after him he was gone.


	14. Whiplash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little late! And guess what! I hate it! :D
> 
> Thank you so much for reading everyone. Love y'all!

_"...hate watching you do that..."_

_"...yourself a favor. Don't look."_

_"Someone's got to protect her."_

_"As though you could possibly protect her from me."_

Drifting back from that dream was like clawing through sludge. Like he was still holding me under—a hand pressing down on the crown of my head as I tried to breach the surface. But I pushed and shoved and wriggled my way up, lurching toward filtered light and voices. Desperate for breath. Desperate for freedom. It wasn't enough. I needed more. So I called on light, and I broke free.

My eyes opened—slowly, and just a sliver.

The campsite was pale with burgeoning dawn and the woods were quiet, breathing mist and shadow in that threadbare emptiness where night ended and day began. For a moment I was disoriented—half expecting a flutter of blossoms off the Satori tree, or a warm, lingering touch in my hair. But then I heard Link's voice again, the familiar, frustrated heat in it, and the reality of him washed away the dream like floodwaters.

"She's more than capable of keeping me out of her head if she wanted to, which is more than I can say for the rest of you. If you were really worried about keeping her safe you should have taught her a little of that elemental magic you're so fond of, instead of leaving that happy task to me."

"I don't just mean from you," breathed the other voice. Behind my back, nearer him and the fire. Urbosa's voice.

"From herself?" he scoffed. "Even I, for all my power, am not capable of that."

"Of course you are," she said, and though I couldn't see her expression her disdain was palpable. "You could have forced her hand in the Lost Woods and put a stop to this before it started, or at Thyphlo, or on the Plateau. You could do it now. You simply choose not to."

I nearly leapt to his defense, desperate to keep him from spiraling down that line of thought, nearly sat up and gave myself away. But he just chuckled, a low, humming note in the back of his throat.

"The princess can be very persuasive."

"The princess is _young_. And for all her wisdom she still leads with her heart."

He paused, and I stilled, disturbed and spellbound. The fire snapped, there was the soft rustle of stirring morning. Then, "How young?"

"Barely seventeen."

"Gods," he laughed bitterly. "Worse than I thought."

"I'm glad you find this so amusing."

"I don't find it amusing at all. Your world is hanging by a thread, and you're all tethered to the will of a child."

Urbosa sighed, her bangles clinking as she she moved. Perhaps to stare into the fire. Perhaps to recline a bit and stare through the canopy at the last of the stars. "This was a burden that never should have fallen to her. The queen was taken from us too soon. And therein lies the problem."

Another pause stretched between them, thick and ruminative as he dissected and drew conclusions. I strained to listen, paralyzed and powerless, as something stinging and wet lodged in my chest. _The problem_. The problem with _me_.

He decided, too gravely, "She never grieved."

"She never had the chance. She was six years old, and before her mother was cold in the ground they started filling her head with prayers and prophecies. She's trained her entire life to ward off the Calamity, and when she pictured confronting an evil harbinging death, who do you suppose she imagined saving? She doesn't know how to let go." And then, pointedly, "She doesn't know how to let _you_ go."

I could hear the frown on his voice. "Then she's going to have to learn."

"There isn't time. If you can't do this, you'll have to force her hand."

"I know."

A log went into the fire and it surged, breathing hot breath in all directions and scattering embers. Devouring while thoughts settled aimlessly like fluttering bits of ash. My fingers bit into my palms, leaving little moons all over soft flesh. Urbosa loosed a long, troubled breath.

"She'll never forgive you for that."

"She's resilient," he scoffed. "You do her a disservice by treating her like she's fragile."

"And you do her a disservice by acting like you're just another faceless soldier in her army."

"Am I not?"

"Don't be coy. You know you're not. Not to her."

I could picture his face in the wake of that accusation: impervious, hard as flint, shrouding misgivings. Unyielding and stubborn as ever. He said, "She doesn't need a hero to fight her wars for her. She'll figure that out soon enough."

"I don't mean because she thinks she needs you."

"Then what do you mean?"

"I mean because she's falling in love with you," she sighed, resigned, like it was obvious and he was an idiot, and my heart stopped.

"She's not in love," he countered, a little too loudly to my ears, too harshly. "She's confused. She has someone else's memories in her head."

"If you don't see it, then you're as blind as she is." An unsettling pause, a pop of the fire. A painful stammer as my heart restarted. "Or maybe you don't _want_ to see it."

"If she gives me the opportunity, I _will_ kill her," he murmured. "You can't possibly imagine the disaster that would spell for your world."

"I have an inkling."

"Then you had best pray to whatever gods you still believe in that you're wrong."

I waited for more—breath held, spine rigid—but silence crawled up to settle between them like a fog. Something thick and bitter coiled behind my ribs, reached up into my throat. It made my eyes sting.

"Ask yourself this," she finally said, leaving a final word of warning in her wake the way she might leave a bolt of lightning. "Can you honestly say you've done nothing to encourage her?"

He didn't offer her an answer, and she didn't wait for one, getting to her feet and strapping her scimitar around her waist. And though I'm sure she meant to set _Link's_ mind churning, the one left rattled was me.

"It's nearly sunrise," she murmured. "We should wake the others."

He grunted a pithy agreement, and from my place beside the dwindling fire, playing at being asleep, I heard Daruk startle from his boulderous slumber and Revali hiss at being disturbed. Mipha was much more graceful, hardly making a sound as she peeled herself from the ground. By the time Urbosa made it to me, there had been enough shuffling that how easily I stirred wasn't terribly surprising.

The others set quietly—sleepily—about breaking down our campsite, smothering the fire and putting away gear. Link loomed along the fringe, unhelpful. I was only slightly less useless, folding my bedroll so meticulously that by the time I was finished there was nothing left to do but lace up my boots.

The truth was I was lost in my thoughts, and all the more as we silently moved towards the mouth of the woods, Link falling in step just behind me.

My pulse throbbed in my throat as his proximity set the hairs on the back of my neck standing, my stomach clenched, imagining what was going through his head. I was disappointed, and angry, and humiliated. And the worst part was there was no one to blame for it but myself.

They hadn't been wrong. I _was_ young, leading with my heart through uncharted waters with this whole expedition and endangering thousands in the process. And for all the blessing of the gods that should have made me wise and fearless, for all his own efforts to make me see reason, I was still terrified of losing him.

That terror was the strangest part of all. Why couldn't I bring myself to choose my kingdom over the one who would destroy it? Why did the prospect of losing a thousand lives frighten me less than losing his? Urbosa had clearly drawn her own conclusion, which was both embarrassing and mortifying. This unpleasant twist of feeling, all anger and fear and doubt—was I supposed to believe that was love? It seemed ridiculous. But the more I dared to confront the idea of letting him go, the more my heart screamed in my chest, and trying to apply reason to it had proven both exhausting and useless.

I blinked back brimming, frustrated tears. Was I falling in love with him? Could I have been that stupid?

Our party marched out of ashen woods into the valley. On the grassy cliffs overlooking the village, our Sheikah companions were already waiting for us, ringed in the first spills of early morning light pouring over the hillside. In decided contrast to my brooding mood, Purah and Robbie were practically bubbling over. The first thing Purah did when we came into view was bound over and shove a strange stone lantern into Daruk's hands, and Robbie cornered Revali.

"Thank Kaerushin, I was getting so sick of carrying it already," she breathed as he pinched the handle curiously between massive fingers, and then it seemed to strike her that the same brute strength which let him hold it aloft with such ease might as easily crush it and she swatted his arm. "Be careful with it!"

"Hello Princess," Impa smiled, warm and steady and reassuring as ever. It made my heart settle just a little, made my mouth soften out of its worried line. "It's good to see you again."

Robbie was asking "Do you have like a saddle or what?" before I could get out a reply, his goggles flicked down over his eyes as he examined Revali's wings and chest, looking for some kind of harness, and I spent the next little while sorting out their working relationship while the others divided our resources—though it seemed to me that most everyone's food and water merely transferred to Impa, but I was too busy deflecting the insults they had begun hurling at each other to object properly.

Link loomed at the overlook like a shadow, neither amused by their antics nor paying them any heed. He no doubt had other things on his mind. And he hadn't said a word to me all morning, his expression fixed in an immutable frown. All at once my mouth was pressing towards its worried line again.

Mipha finally intervened once all the other preparations were made, flexing her decided influence over Revali in my behalf. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he let himself be placated, still wondering at how easily she tamed him. It reminded me of someone else who was just as bad-tempered and stubborn, and a similar influence I exerted over him.

I put that thought right out of my head.

We set off from Kakariko Village with the sunrise. Robbie, Mipha, and Revali took the north road towards Akkala while the rest of us went south, slipping out of the village slumbering in the valley like spirits melting into the mist.

We stayed together through the canyon snaking along the Pillars of Levia and parted ways where the road forked just after Kakariko Bridge—Purah, Daruk, and Urbosa heading east towards Hateno, while Impa, Link, and I marched on towards the Dueling Peaks and the Great Plateau beyond. I couldn't help myself as we said our goodbyes. I dove straight into Urbosa's arms.

"Little Bird," she soothed, embracing me easily. "What's wrong?"

"I wish I could tell you," I hissed miserably. "I wish there was time."

"Say the word, and I'll go with you," she murmured. "Daruk can handle this on his own."

"No. No, this is too important."

She brushed a loose furl of hair out of my eyes as I pulled away, frowning. "Tell me what I can do."

"You can bring me the flame," I sighed. "Help me put an end to this."

She planted a soft kiss on my forehead, wiping at the place where her lips had been with her thumb as thought to wipe away a smear of cobalt. But the color had faded from her lips with our travels, and then come off completely in the hot springs. It was comforting, somehow, anyway.

"I'll bring you the flame myself. I promise."

I nodded, grudgingly letting her go.

The road carried them east, and then quickly out of sight. The road before me seemed to stretch and stretch and stretch.

Impa stayed dutifully at my side as we backtracked through Ash Swamp, while Link pushed ahead. It was rather like following a stormcloud. And like a brewing thunderhead—looming, ominous, full to bursting—it was hard to tear my eyes away.

There was something bitter and unbearable in the way he had led me through this marsh the day before by the hand, and now barely tolerated being within 15 feet of me. I knew it was stupid to take offense, or to expect anything less than mercurial behavior from him.

But perhaps it had less to do with his behavior, and more to do with mine.

"Your father was so relieved to hear that you were safe," Impa said, the easy tenor of her voice snatching me from less pleasant thoughts. "When you went missing, we all feared something terrible had happened."

"Father," I murmured, my mouth twisting at how foreign the word tasted after going so long without using it. I had been so overwhelmed since this all started, I hardly thought of how things must have appeared from the confines of the castle. I hardly thought of what any of this had been doing to him. My mouth twisted deeper. "What he must think of all this."

"He wasn't pleased when he realized you were still in danger," she admitted. Which I'm sure was a polite way of saying he was furious. "But he understood. He says that you're carrying out the will of the goddess."

_Father_. Our relationship had been strained for years, but had finally begun to mend. He had pushed me so hard to unlock my powers when I was young. But after so many unfruitful visits to the springs, so many unanswered prayers, he had sat on the perron steps with me in the throne room one warm evening, both of us washed in molten sunset pouring through the stained glass, and told me I had done enough.

_Powers or no powers_ , he had said, covering my hand with his, _you will always be my daughter. My Zelda. And I am so proud of the young woman you've turned out to be._

My face had crumpled, and I'd thrown myself at him, burying in his fluffy beard. It was the first time since losing Mother that he had felt truly more my father than he did my king.

As fate would have it, my powers followed soon after.

He was just one of many whose welfare I had failed to consider when I started down this path. I wondered if he would have been so supportive if he knew how selfish I'd been.

There were certain aspects of all this I was _certain_ he would not approve of.

I mustered a wobbly smile. "I hope he's right."

"Have faith, Princess," she said, assured as ever. Confident. It was a breath of fresh air cutting through the smog of doubt that followed me everywhere. "The pieces are falling into place. Everything will be as it should be."

"Did Kaerushin tell you that?" I smirked, grateful, and she smiled, so soft and wide her eyes crinkled.

"Not with words. The guardians are not always so clear." But then, as though to contradict her directly, a tireless frog leapt out of the marsh, croaking loudly as it crossed our path, and bounded into another puddle with a hollow _kerplunk_. Impa glanced back at me, bemused, and shrugged a shoulder. "And sometimes they are."

I couldn't help but bark a startled laugh.

We walked through the marsh into the shadow of the Dueling Peaks, across the Squabble River, following the empty road between the towering cliffs and riverbank, and on through the smattering of woods.

Proxim Bridge came into view by midday. It was the first landmark for pilgrims traveling from the east, crossing the river named for the goddess on the way to her temple, and a heartening reminder that the Plateau was close.

It was also the gateway to civilization, which was why Link had ground to a halt, staring at it from a disdainful distance.

He turned as we closed the distance, scowling, and held out his hand expectantly. Impa frowned at it, and then at him, and then at me. But he wouldn't tolerate a long explanation, and no amount of excuses would make her any happier about it.

"We'll teleport to the Shrine from here," I said, reaching for it. "Follow as quickly as you can."

Then I wrapped myself in a film of power and took his hand, and in a blaze of vertigo and color we left the river junction behind and spiraled to the grassy hillside in front of the shrine.

I gulped air as we emerged, one hand still glued to his and the other on his shoulder for balance. But, despite being a bit winded, I actually felt all right otherwise. I must have dredged up just the right amount of power, which I couldn't help but feel rather accomplished in. I met his eyes, hoping, now that we were alone, he would finally break that intolerable silence he had insisted upon since we left Cotera's woods. But no such luck. The second my hold on him went lax he freed himself, marching on to the veiled mouth of the cave and waving the illusion out of the way.

I frowned as I followed him into the cavern and down the plinking steps. The orbs in the walls cast us in glittering orange and blue spangles. It felt as though he was watching me from everywhere.

I didn't know how to breach his silence, which was so obviously deliberate and simmering with hostility. But I needed to find a way. We were too close to the end of all this to have a wedge driven between us now. My brain swarmed with questions, with worries. Was he hurting? Had the jump taken a toll? Would he tell me if he needed to dream?

I knew the answers to all of those questions, and didn't like any of them.

I followed him to the landing, through the hall, up into the yawning chamber with its vat and suspended modules. He turned at the entry, pulling the Slate at his hip from its holster, and moved to place it in the socket staring emptily in the face of the terminal. It pulled the Slate down flush, rotated it. Sang a resonant trill of notes. Symbols and lights ignited on its face, flickering in and out of darkness, bathing us both in more azure glow. Link tapped at a few of them, brushed others aside. I lingered behind him, fretting.

I sighed, bracing myself. There was nothing for it.

"Link—"

"Did you have fun eavesdropping this morning?"

His voice cut quietly through whatever I had meant to say, slicing easily as a sharp blade across a soft throat. I froze, recalculating, trying to digest the implications. But it was like trying to blink shapes back into focus after a lightning strike in the black of night.

"You knew," I finally managed, "and you didn't say anything?"

"I wanted the Gerudo to be able to speak her mind—wanted you to hear the truth," he said, reading the flurry of symbols playing on the display. The Slate sang again, a brief, twinkling question, and the glow spiked, catching on his profile as he turned. "Little does she know how damaged you really are."

My eyes swept up to his and I floundered in them: burning, hateful, _spiteful_. I knew there was no containing that rage. That I should run from it rather than try to contain it. But I was mindless in the face of it, like a moth fluttering towards flame. I couldn't move, couldn't keep a soft, startled whisper from escaping my lips. "What?"

He abandoned the terminal to face my squarely, disgust written all over his face.

"Two lifetimes in your head. Dead mother, dead lover. A power that nearly swallows the world every time you touch it," he sneered, drifting closer. Engulfing the space between us until there was no room to breathe. "You're no goddess."

My breath rattled deafeningly in my skull, my blood pounded. Suddenly it felt like I didn't have the strength to stand.

"Fine," I whispered, cursing the way the word shook. "Fix the shrine. I'm going to wait for Impa."

I turned, but so did he, and before I could make it to the hall he was at the terminal, fingers sliding over the Slate until it sang, and the columns of the door plunged closed, blocking my path. I stood at the wall, trembling, breathless. Wishing I had run when I had the chance.

"Well? Was she right?" he breathed, closing in behind me again. Looming like a shadow, taking up all the space in that room, all the air, until I felt sure he would swallow me as well. "Are you in love with me?"

_I think I am. And it's horrible._

"Open the door," I said, but he wasn't in the mood for taking orders. He grabbed me by the elbow, twisting me around hard enough that I had to bite back a gasp.

"You can hardly blame me for wanting to be sure after your performance last night," he hissed, that untamable fury I knew so well glimmering just beneath the surface, translating imprecisely through his too-tight grip on my arm. "It was puerile, even for you."

I swallowed down a rush of salt and hurt, my nails carving moons into my palms again. Wishing we were beyond this. Wishing that every inch of progress I ever made with him wasn't snatched out from under me at every turn.

Well, I was tired of being hurt by him. It was so much easier to be angry.

"If either of us is _damaged_ , it's you," I growled, taking a meaningful step forward. Taking back some of the space, some of the air. Threatening to swallow him for a change. "Now let me go, and open the door."

His grip only tightened, pressing in to meet me measure for measure. "I just want us to be clear. The boy you dream with doesn't exist."

"Of course he does," I said, too calmly, too confidently, too cuttingly. "He's all the parts of you that still have a scrap of feeling, and it terrifies you that I can see him through all that armor—that I can touch him," I breathed, cradling his jaw and running my thumb down the seam of his lip, "when all you want is to forget him."

He hesitated, his expression strikingly, deliciously uncertain. I wanted to drown in it.

"You keep trying to hurt me," I whispered, gripped by something dangerous, something manic. By the staggering high of having power over him. "But you forget how easily I could hurt you."

His lips parted, cool breath ghosting aimlessly over the tip of my thumb as I held his eyes, as I bound him with a spell that he didn't have magic to fight. Then I pressed forward, bracing myself for the biting cold of him as I slipped warm fingers up his jaw, and kissed him.

It was nothing like the dreams.

I marveled at the frost that laced my mouth, at the way my lips gave and molded over his unyielding ones. At how he failed to fight me. Like it had somehow been too quick, too soft and unexpected, for him to react. My lips went numb, my breath chilled in my lungs, my throat ached. My skin writhed with the nearness of him. I had to call on light to keep from recoiling with a cry, to warm me enough that I didn't freeze solid. It was terrifying, as though one careless stroke of his tongue could rent my soul right out of me.

For all that, he still tasted like rain.

I pulled back. His eyes were just a fraction too wide. His hands were closed on my forearms, though it seemed neither of us knew whether he meant to hold me or push me away.

"You're wrong," he finally said, after a long, painful moment. "I never forget that."

He stepped away, wordlessly moving to the Slate in the pedestal, and opened the door.


End file.
